Critical thinking skills

Investigating Modern American History encourages critical thinking skills by teaching students to analyze historical claims in a meaningful way.

Students will explore big questions including:

• What is freedom?
  
• How should people work for political and social change?
• How far should a government go to care for its citizens?

They will also evaluate corresponding historical claims such as:

• Black Americans did not find freedom during Reconstruction.
• The women’s suffrage movement was a battle about social class.
• The actions of ordinary people pushed the Roosevelt administration to enact the New Deal.

Steady encouragement

After each new topic is presented, students answer a few questions about the main ideas. This helps them stay focused, actively process the information, and construct new knowledge.

Presentation and exploration

Thirteen chapters lead students through an examination of primary sources so they can put the concepts into context and develop historical thinking.

Study questions

The webtext supports equitable teaching with the use of autograded formative assessment. This enables all students to develop A-student habits through low-stakes opportunities to check their understanding.

Everything you need

Investigating Modern American History provides everything you need for an online course—including lecture slides, a test bank, and an analytics dashboard. Plus, we can tailor the webtext to match your program’s emphasis, term length, student expectations, and assignment types.

1. Doing History
   1. Introduction
   2. Getting Started
   3. Claims and Questions
   4. Historical Sources
   5. Primary Sources
   6. Describe the Source
   7. Consider the Circumstances
   8. Make Connections
   9. Primary Source Practice
   10. History Shapes Us
2. Investigating Reconstruction
   1. Introduction
   2. About Reconstruction
   3. A Black Vision of Freedom
   4. Special Field Orders, No. 15
   5. The Freedmen of Edisto Island
   6. The Freedmen’s Bureau Responds
   7. Life After the War
   8. Terror in the American South
   9. The Black Codes
   10. The 15th Amendment
   11. Suppressing the Vote
   12. The End of Reconstruction
   13. Assessing the Claim
   14. Chapter Wrap-Up
3. Investigating Westward Expansion
   1. Introduction
   2. About Westward Expansion
   3. Land of the Spotted Eagle
   4. American Progress
   5. Homesteaders on the Great Plains
   6. Treaties and Reservations
   7. “The Buffalo, like the Indian, Stood in the Way”
   8. The Black Hills War
   9. The Battle of the Little Bighorn
   10. “The Rumor Got About: ‘The Dead Are to Return’”
   11. Wounded Knee
   12. From Warfare to Control
   13. Assessing the Claim
   14. Chapter Wrap-Up
4. Investigating the Bells of Balangiga
   1. Introduction
   2. About the Philippine-American War
   3. An Overseas Empire
   4. Illustrating Imperialism
   5. The Anti-Imperialist League
   6. “The Philippines Are for the Filipinos”
   7. A Senator on American Empire
   8. The Assault at Balangiga
   9. The Aftermath
   10. The Controversy of the Bells
   11. Returning the Bells
   12. Assessing the Claim
   13. Chapter Wrap-Up
5. Investigating Women’s Suffrage
   1. Introduction
   2. About Women’s Suffrage
   3. The National American Woman Suffrage Association
   4. Mary Church Terrell on Progress
   5. Suffrage and White Supremacy
   6. “The Application of Democracy to Women”
   7. Suffrage as an Economic Necessity
   8. Organizing in Factory Towns
   9. The National Woman’s Party
   10. The President Concedes
   11. The Anti-suffrage Response
   12. Assessing the Claim
   13. Chapter Wrap-Up
6. Investigating Sacco and Vanzetti
   1. Introduction
   2. About the 1920s
   3. “Traits of Italian Character”
   4. The Bombings of 1919
   5. Closing the Gate
   6. The Anarchist Exclusion Act
   7. “A Movement Organized Against Democracy”
   8. The Palmer Raids
   9. The Sacco and Vanzetti Case
   10. Consciousness of Guilt
   11. “Spark to Ignite Fire of Hate”
   12. “There Will Always Be Collision Between One and the Other”
   13. Assessing the Claim
   14. Chapter Wrap-Up
7. Investigating the New Deal
   1. Introduction
   2. About the 1930s
   3. The Bonus Army
   4. Farmers Take Action
   5. The Farm Act
   6. Documenting Migrants
   7. Share Our Wealth
   8. Social Security
   9. The National Labor Relations Act
   10. Dear Mrs. Roosevelt
   11. Promoting the WPA
   12. Discrimination in the WPA
   13. Assessing the Claim
   14. Chapter Wrap-Up
8. Investigating Japanese American Incarceration
   1. Introduction
   2. About Japanese Immigration and World War II
   3. Immigrant Workers
   4. Labor Disputes
   5. Restricting Japanese Immigration
   6. The Alien Land Laws
   7. Before Pearl Harbor
   8. Immediate Responses to Pearl Harbor
   9. Explaining Removal
   10. “You Feel You Were Betrayed”
   11. After the War
   12. Assessing the Claim
   13. Chapter Wrap-Up
9. Investigating the Early Cold War
   1. Introduction
   2. About the 1950s
   3. The Atomic Age
   4. George Kennan’s Long Telegram
   5. The Berlin Blockade and the Marshall Plan
   6. The Nuclear Arms Race
   7. Soviet Spies in the United States
   8. Duck and Cover
   9. Enemies from Within
   10. The Minute Women
   11. Containing Communism
   12. Assessing the Claim
   13. Chapter Wrap-Up
10. Investigating Civil Rights and Black Power
    1. Introduction
    2. About the Civil Rights Movement
    3. Jo Ann Robinson and the Montgomery Bus Boycott
    4. The Birmingham Campaign
    5. Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Summer
    6. John Lewis and the Selma Campaign
    7. Malcolm X and Black Nationalism
    8. The Lowndes County Freedom Organization
    9. The March Against Fear and the Origins of Black Power
    10. What We Want
    11. Chaos or Community
    12. Assessing the Claim
    13. Chapter Wrap-Up
11. Investigating Movements for Social Change
    1. Introduction
    2. About the 1970s
    3. The Rise of Feminism
    4. The Rise of Gay Rights
    5. The Combahee River Collective
    6. The Moral Majority
    7. The Equal Rights Amendment
    8. Phyllis Schlafly and STOP ERA
    9. Women and Their Bodies
    10. The Reaction to Abortion Access
    11. The AIDS Epidemic
    12. AIDS Activism
    13. Assessing the Claim
    14. Chapter Wrap-Up
12. Investigating Immigration Reform
    1. Introduction
    2. About Latin American Immigration
    3. Immigration Legislation in the 1980s
    4. Free Trade
    5. Immigration Reform of 1996
    6. The Push to Emigrate
    7. Migration Songs
    8. Small-Town Immigrants
    9. The Movement for Sanctuary Cities
    10. The Reaction Against Sanctuary Cities
    11. Assessing the Claim
    12. Chapter Wrap-Up
13. Investigating the Politics of Climate Change
    1. Introduction
    2. About Climate Change
    3. “This Might, in Fact, Make a Considerable Change in the Climate”
    4. Exxon’s Technical Review
    5. “I Think It Is Time to Act”
    6. Front-Page News
    7. The Kyoto Campaign
    8. Rejecting Kyoto
    9. The Paris Agreement
    10. Competing for Solutions
    11. The Green New Deal
    12. Assessing the Claim
    13. Chapter Wrap-Up

Interactive content

Writing templates

This webtext includes interactive templates that students will use to take notes as they read primary sources and then assess whether each source supports a historical claim made in the chapter.

Response boards

Students engage each other through discussion boards that allow them to see the responses of their peers only after they’ve posted their own comment.

Polls

Polls allow students to share their opinions and then view a live pie chart displaying the responses of all class members.

Study tools

Webtext Reader app

Students can access materials and complete assignments offline with our mobile app available for iOS and Android.

Reading tools

Reading tools allow students to click on vocabulary terms for definitions and mark up their own webtext by highlighting and adding notes in the margins.

Read to Me

Our text-to-speech feature instantly creates an audio version of the webtext page to extend the reach of online content.

My Progress

Students can keep track of their own work inside My Progress, which records their scores, time spent, and completion.

Advisors

Tomiko Meeks, MA, Texas Southern University

Yanek Mieczkowski, PhD, Florida Institute of Technology

Leslie Ruff, MA, Strayer University

Lawrence Wallis, MA, Mercer County Community College

Contributors

Andrew Paul, PhD, University of North Carolina Asheville

Nick Welna, MA, City University of New York Graduate Center

Peer Reviewers

Dawson Barrett, PhD, Del Mar College

James Klein, PhD, Del Mar College

Sarah Sullivan, McHenry County College

Mark Winter, Southern New Hampshire University

Publisher

David Lindrum

Executive Editor

Mary Jane Lindrum

Creative Director

Zara Elizabeth Crockett

Content Editor

Jenny Westrick

Assessment Writers

Laura Aitcheson

Karolina Koczynska

Candice Mancini

Mark Rathjen

Production Coordinator

Georgia Mason

Copy Editor

Stephen Clark

Production Editors

John Alfieri

Rachel Garzarelli

Marquita Jones

Natalie Welch

Assistant Production Editor

Serena Giunchigliani

Production Assistant

Sam Arias

Photo Research & Permissions

Zara Elizabeth Crockett

Emma Haseley

Karolina Koczynska

User Interface Design

Sam Korthof

Clint McFarlin