Who Built America? Working People and the Nation’s History
Who Built America? surveys the nation’s past to show the role that working people played in the making of modern America and the transformations wrought by the changing nature and forms of work. Explore more than 2000 historical documents in the History Matters Repository, read Historians Disagree essays written by prominent scholars, watch documentary films, and take A Closer Look at select topics. Produced by the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning at the Graduate Center, City University of New York.
Image: Rohr Barn Raising, 1888, from the collection of The Massillon Museum
Who Built America? Working People and the Nation’s History
- Volume 1
- Preface
- Part I: Colonization and Revolution, 1492-1815
- Chapter 1: A Meeting of Three Worlds: Europe, Africa, and American Colonization, 1492-1680
- Peoples of the New World
- The Background to Overseas Expansion: Europe and Africa
- The Invasion of the Americas Begins: Portugal, Spain, and the Need for Labor
- Early Colonization Efforts in North America
- The English Colonial Experience
- Native Americans: Decline, Resistance, Exchange
- Conclusion: The Remaking of Three Worlds
- Chapter 2: Servitude, Slavery, and the Growth of the Southern Colonies, 1620-1760
- Chapter 3: Family Labor and the Growth of the Northern Colonies, 1640-1760
- Chapter 4: Toward Revolution, 1750-1776
- Chapter 5: Revolution, Constitution, and the People, 1776-1815
- Part II: Free Labor and Slavery, 1790-1850
- Part III: War, Reconstruction, and Labor, 1848-1877
- Preface
- Volume 2
- Part I: Monopoly and Upheaval, 1877-1914
- Chapter 1: Progress and Poverty: Industrial Capitalism in the Gilded Age, 1877-1893
- Chapter 2: Community and Conflict: Working People Respond to Industrial Capitalism, 1877-1893
- Chapter 3: From Depression to Expansion: Industrial Capitalism Triumphs at Home and Abroad, 1893-1900
- Chapter 4: Change and Continuity in Daily Life, 1900-1914
- Chapter 5: Radicals and Reformers in the Progressive Era, 1900-1914
- Part II: War, Depression, and Industrial Unionism, 1914-1946
- Part III: Cold War America – And After, 1946-1989
- Part IV: A Fragmented Nation, 1989-2021
- Chapter 14: The American People in an Age of Global Capitalism, 1989-2001
- Chapter 15: America's World After 9/11, 2001-2007
- Chapter 16: Hope, Change, and Fear, 2007-2016
- Prologue: Growing Inequality and the Rise of the Right Reshape the United States
- Global Imbalance and Political Polarity in the Obama Years
- A New Digital Norm: Economics, Politics, and Culture in the Social Media Age
- Popular Uprisings: Battles for Survival, Equality and Justice
- Conclusion: The 2016 Election
- Chapter 17: Coda: "To Continue the Work of Our Foreparents"
- Part I: Monopoly and Upheaval, 1877-1914