American History

About This Product

Take a quick look at the overview video for American History:

American History is a comprehensive resource that spans our nation’s history, with a user-friendly interface and award-winning content. The home page offers many ways to begin exploring the material, from the videos, slideshow overviews, and Topic Centers to the lists of key content handpicked by our editors to help users find a starting point for their research. By providing the most comprehensive range of information in one complete resource—subject entries, biographies, primary sources, videos and slideshows, images, timelines, and maps and graphs, plus full cross-searchability across all the Infobase history databases—American History offers a virtual library of American history for educators, students, and researchers of all ages.

Highlights:

• Comprehensive Coverage: With American History, users can delve deep into their topics or examine different perspectives through event and topic entries, slideshows, primary sources, images, tablet/mobile-friendly videos, general and topic-specific timelines, biographies of key people, original maps and charts, and more.
• Easy Access to Content: Featured content in American History is handpicked by our editors to inform research and provide guided entryways into the database, plus convenient links to key areas are at the top of every page.
• Editorially Curated Topic Centers: American History features specially selected content on different eras, themes, and milestone events of history—including articles, shareable slideshows, videos, primary sources, and more—that provides a starting point for research.

Topic Centers include:

• • • America at War:
      • Revolutionary War Battles
      • War of 1812
      • U.S.-Mexican War
      • American Civil War
      • Plains Indian Wars
      • Spanish-American War
      • World War I
      • World War II in Europe and the Pacific
      • Korean War
      • Vietnam War
      • Persian Gulf War
      • Iraq War
      • Afghanistan War
    • Daily Life in America:
      • Daily Life in the Colonial and Revolutionary Era
      • Daily Life in the Early National Period
      • Daily Life in the Civil War and Reconstruction Era
      • Daily Life in the Gilded Age
      • Daily Life in the Age of Reform
      • Daily Life in the Roaring Twenties
      • Daily Life in the Great Depression and World War II
      • Daily Life in Postwar America
      • Daily Life in Contemporary America
    • Decades and Eras:
      • The Twenties: 1920–1929
      • The Thirties: 1930–1939
      • The Forties: 1940–1949
      • The Fifties: 1950–1959
      • The Sixties: 1960–1969
      • The Seventies: 1970–1979
      • The Eighties: 1980–1989
      • The Nineties: 1990–1999
      • The 21st Century: 2000–Present
    • Early America
      • Colonial Settlements
      • Exploration of America
      • Thirteen Colonies
      • Salem Witch Trials
    • Foreign Affairs and U.S. Government:
      • New Deal
      • U.S. Government
    • Society and Social Issues:
      • American Women’s History
      • Industrial Revolution
      • Latino-American History
      • Manifest Destiny

• Suggested Research Topics: Each Topic Center in American History includes handpicked selections showcasing the best resources for each topic—including in-depth overview essays—and providing guidance for research.
• Primary Sources: American History includes more than 10,000 primary sources, many with introductions that provide context and background.
• Videos, Images, Maps, and Slideshows: American History’s videos, images, original maps, and original slideshows provide a fascinating visual introduction to key topics and themes.
• Biographies: Under “Featured People,” American History includes helpful lists of award-winning writers, U.S. presidents, U.S. vice presidents, early explorers, First Ladies, Chief Justices of the U.S., great military leaders, Supreme Court justices, and Founding Fathers. Each list includes dates of birth and death, a brief descriptor of the person’s achievements, and a link to relevant search results.
• Themes in U.S. History: Especially helpful for students in honors-level and AP-level U.S. history courses, American History‘s Themes in U.S. History section explores 26 major themes in American history century by century. Organized around such critical subjects as agriculture, demographics, economics, daily life, government, religion, science and technology, war, and women, the essays trace the progress of human history since the 1500s in what would become the United States, fostering critical conceptual thinking and allowing students to focus on a particular theme in one era and then examine that theme across the full reach of American history. Discussion questions for each theme encourage students to think critically.
• Controversies in History: Editorially selected pro/con articles on many high-interest controversies in U.S. history can be found in American History, enabling researchers to grasp the essence and importance of every conflict and the reasons Americans debated them.
• Overview Essays: American History includes substantial and thorough overview essays giving extensive background on relevant historical topics and eras.
• Book Chapters: Chapters from authoritative print titles written by noted historians complement the thousands of encyclopedia entries, biographies, definitions, and other resources American History provides. Book Chapters allow for original thinking and are ideal for an in-depth study of a topic.
• Authoritative Source List: American History features a complete inventory, by type, of the extraordinary amount of expertly researched and written content in the database, including articles from a wealth of award-winning proprietary and distinguished print titles (including the new edition of the award-winning Encyclopedia of American History), primary sources, images, videos, timelines, and a list of contributors to the database—information researchers can trust.
• Curriculum Tools: This section of American History features writing and research tips for students and educators, including:
  • Advice on analyzing and understanding editorial cartoons, primary sources, and online sources
  • Guides for presenting research, including avoiding plagiarism, citing sources, completing a primary source worksheet, summarizing articles, and writing research papers
  • Educator tools, including advice on preventing plagiarism and using editorial cartoons in class.
• Full Cross-Searchability: American History is fully cross-searchable with any combination of the other Infobase History Research Center databases to which your institution subscribes.
• Election-Related Content: American History includes rich historical content ideal for election-related studies, allowing users to research past elections, political parties, key figures, and important terms through essays, primary source documents, images, videos, tables, charts, and maps that put the 2016 election into perspective.

Features:

• Search by Common Core, national, state, provincial, International Baccalaureate Organization, C3 Framework for Social Studies, and College Board AP standards to find correlating articles
• Convenient A-to-Z topic lists can be filtered by Topic Center
• Tag “clouds” for all content, linking to related material
• Searchable timelines, including a detailed general timeline, updated monthly, plus numerous subject-specific and era-specific timelines
• Maps and graphs with descriptions
• Real-time, searchable Reuters® newsfeed
• Dynamic citations in MLA, Chicago, APA, and Harvard formats, with EasyBib and NoodleTools export functionality
• List of contributors to the database
• Read Aloud tool
• Ability for users to set preferences for default language, citation format, number of search results, and standards set for correlations
• Persistent record links
• Search Assist technology
• Searchable Support Center with valuable help materials, how-to tips, tutorials, and live help chat
• Google Translate for 100+ languages.