A Companion to 19th-Century America presents the most up-to-date interpretations of the wide range of historical experience in nineteenth-century America. Twenty-seven scholars - all specialists in their own thematic areas - demonstrate how nineteenth-century American historiography has evolved, summarize current historical research, and assess the future direction of scholarship. Coverage of topics encompasses not only the traditional areas of political, economic, and diplomatic history but also more recent fields of academic enquiry such as the social construction of race, ethnicity, gender, class formations, and cultural identities.

Intended for scholars, students, and general readers of modern American history, this volume stands alone in providing a historiographical overview of nineteenth-century America that is both complete in its coverage and cutting-edge in its interpretations. Each chapter includes a select bibliography which serves as a convenient reference to additional reading.

William L. Barney is Professor of American History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has specialized in the history of the United States in the nineteenth century, especially the Civil War period, and is the author of The Road to Secession (1972), Flawed Victory: A New Perception of the Civil War (1975), and co-edited The American Journey: A History of the United States (1997). In 1987 he was a Fulbright Professor at the University of Genoa in Italy and served as Bowman and Gordon Gray Professor at the University of North Carolina from 1990 to 1993.