American Conversations Volume 2 Author:James H. Merrell, Jerald Podair The American Conversation: From the Centennial through the Millenium, Volume 2 is the second in a two-volume anthology of original sources in United States history. The first act explores how peoples from northwestern Europe, western Africa, and eastern North America collided here after 1492, and how they crafted a strange n... more »ew world from their similarities–and their differences. The second act begins in 1877, the tumultuous first year of the United States' second century of existence, and concludes as the world's most powerful nation enters a twenty-first century filled with new perils and opportunities. Students get to see the nation’s past in a new light, to approach it from a new angle. These centuries were a fascinating place that is in some ways as exotic as any remote land we might visit today. At the same time, the people and texts the reader meets in these pages will resonate powerfully with the contemporary American conversation. Whatever today’s topic–race relations or the battle of the sexes; protest or piety; unum vs. pluribus; the grip of past on present–-readers will find its roots in the centuries that precede the present..« less