For more than twenty-five years, After the Fact has provided a time-tested, innovative approach to guiding
students through American history and the methods used to study it. In dramatic episodes that move chronologically
through American history, this best-selling book examines a broad variety of topics like oral evidence, photographs,
ecological data, films and television programs, church and town records, census data, and novels. Whether for the
introductory survey or for a historical methods course, After the Fact is the ideal text for any instructor who
wants to introduce his or her students to what it is that historians actually do when studying American history.
New to This Edition
A new final chapter investigates the puzzle of body image and gender in contemporary society: why are people
today so overweight yet so obsessed with thin women and fit men?
A new chapter examines quilting in the 1840s and 1850s as an aspect of material culture.
Primary Source Investigator, a CD for students, features mini-documentaries and hundreds of primary sources
such as documents, images, maps, and charts. PSI offers the opportunity to investigate and work with the sources,
take notes on them, then craft a paper or presentation. PSI is packaged free with each new copy of After the Fact.
Three chapters from past editions of After the Fact are included on the CD: "The 'Noble Savage' and the Artist's
Canvas," "Huey Generis," and "Instant Watergate."
New questions at the end of each chapter help students take full advantage of the Primary Source Investigator
CD.
The use of a second color livens up the design of the text.
Table of Contents
Prologue: The Strange Death of Silas Deane: The Problem of Selecting Evidence
1. Serving Time in Virginia: The Perspectives of Evidence in Social History
2. The Visible and Invisible Worlds of Salem: Studying Crisis at the Community Level
3. Declaring Independence: The Strategies of Documentary Analysis
4. Jackson's Frontier, and Turner's: History and Grand Theory
5. The Invisible Pioneers: Ecological Transformations along the Western Frontier
6. Quilting in the 1840s and 1850s: Exploring Material Culture
7. The Madness of John Brown: The Uses of Psychohistory
8. The View from the Bottom Rail: Oral History and the Freedpeople
9. The Mirror with a Memory: Photographic Evidence and the Urban Scene
10. USDA Government Inspected: The Jungle of Political History
11. Sacco and Vanzetti: The Case of History versus Law
12. Dust Bowl Odyssey: The Collective History of a Migration
13. The Decision to Drop the Bomb: The Uses of Models in History
14. From Rosie to Lucy: The Mass Media and Images of Women in the 1950s
15. Breaking into Watergate: Plumbing a Presidency through Audio Tapes
16. Where Trouble Comes: History and Myth in the Films of Vietnam
17. Contemporary Body Image and Gender: Our Obsession with Thin Women and Buff Men
