United States History - General & Miscellaneous, United States - History - General & Miscellaneous

A history of US

Name: A history of US
Author: Joy Hakim
ISBN: 9780195077650

by Joy Hakim

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Overview

Oxford University Press is delighted to announce a revised second edition, in full color and incorporating the most recent discoveries in history and archaeology. And we've added a brand new eleventh volume featuring an index to the entire series, historical maps, the essential documents of US History, and much more. Each book in this award winning series is accurate and reliable history written in the tradition of great storytelling. The narrative and informal text includes offbeat, little-known events and singular personalities that make the traditional meat-and-potatoes of American history anything but boring. Ms. Hakim quotes frequently from primary documents, explaining who wrote them, when, and in what circumstances, so that the reader is implicitly encouraged to assess their accuracy or probable bias. "The best American history witten for young people" just got better.

Hakim's ten-volume history of the United States makes American history as exciting as an adventure story and as stimulating as a suspense yarn. She tells stories with all the fascinating sides of factual history. The dates and events, characters and complexities, heroes, heroines and villains are woven into the great American history. B&W illustrations throughout, index and timelines.

About the Author, Joy Hakim

Joy Hakim

Former educator and editor Joy Hakim made learning about American history hip for kids around the world with her Michener Prize-winning series A History of U.S. Her secret? Says Hakim: "to find the story in a subject is to discover its essence."

Biography

Don't know much about history? That's where Joy Hakim comes in. Dedicated to the ambitious cause of making learning about our country's past actually seem like fun, Hakim has helped readers of all ages get hip to history. Her award-winning ten-volume series A History of U.S. is considered nothing less than a revolution in education circles, and historians and celebrities alike endorse Hakim's mission.

Armed with a bachelor's degree in government from Smith and a master's from Goucher College, Hakim started out as a teacher, and later worked as a newspaper writer and editor. Realizing that the rather dry text and lifeless prose of some history books she was using to teach with made her students less than enthusiastic learners -- and believing that U.S. history should be as fun to read as fiction -- Hakim began to develop the A History of U.S. series of American history lessons. It took Hakim seven years to finish the series -- which owes much of its kid-friendly appeal to the author's practice of using children as her editors.

A History of U.S. was a hit with students and critics alike, winning the James A. Michener Prize for Writing in 1997. In addition, esteemed historians have endorsed Hakim's teachings with as much enthusiasm as she brings to her subject. John Adams author David McCullough describes her lively and effective approach: "Never dull, never the least plodding, [Hakim] brings refreshing spirit and common sense to the telling of every episode."

In 2002's Freedom: A History of U.S., Hakim examines the theme of freedom and what it means to America -- from the actions of our founding fathers to the watershed events of the Civil Rights movement, through the challenges we face in the wake of the September 11 attacks. A 16-part PBS companion special features a star-studded roster of hosts from Today anchor Katie Couric to Hollywood power couple Christopher and Dana Reeve. The Reeves, on why they chose to participate in the event, write on the book's jacket: "Freedom offers us the opportunity to examine the road we have traveled, to better understand why we have fought so hard to keep the idea of freedom at the core of what we believe."

According to Hakim, it's all about the story. On her publisher's Web site, she sums up her signature approach: "Finding the story in a subject is to discover its essence. If we can teach our students to pattern the world into stories, we can turn them into powerful, analytical thinkers."

Good To Know

Hakim is the only author to receive an award from the National Council for Social Studies for writing textbooks.

When she's not writing and researching at her Virginia home, she spends time sharing stories with her grandchildren in Colorado.

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Editorials

School Library Journal

Gr 6 Up-One of the best nonfiction series of the decade just got better. The author has revised and added to the text; murky illustrations have been replaced with hundreds of new, sharp, sometimes color photographs; and an entire volume of documents, substantially annotated by historian Steven Mintz, has been added. Between discussions of recent discoveries related to the waves of prehistoric human emigration to the Americas at one end, and the Clinton administration at the other, Hakim fine-tunes her uniquely lively account of our country's history with new feature essays and updated surveys of late 20th-century science and culture. The final volume contains all or major portions of over 90 significant primary documents, including the Magna Carta, Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech, and President Reagan's 1988 address to students in Moscow, in which he describes the nascent "information revolution." The pages have been redesigned for more visual appeal, but the previous edition's wide margins, with their plethora of well-placed definitions, comments, and quotations, remain. Volumes 1-10 end with a time line and an annotated bibliography; each one is packed with the large-scale movements and events that provide a framework for history, as well as the personalities, anecdotes, wild coincidences, and vivid details that bring that history to life. Due to the narrative structure and the fact that it's almost impossible to put down, this set is not well suited to answer quick questions. It does, however, belong in every reference collection.-John Peters, New York Public Library Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|