“Why is it important to study the history of the United States?  Why do I have to take another US history course when I took them in high school?”

These questions are in the minds of many students when they enroll in a college-level US history course.  To some, history seems like a waste of time.  They think that history is about the past and they want to live in the present and plan for the future.  Others think that there is nothing new to learn.  After all, they learned about US history in elementary school, in junior high school, and again in high school.  And still others, while acknowledging that there is value in studying US history, think that being required to take a 3-credit hour course is a waste of both time and money.  “How will it help me get a job?” they wonder.  All of these thoughts and questions are good and deserve to be answered.  It is my hope that this textbook will go a long way to helping students appreciate the value, complexity, and importance of historical study.

In this brief introduction, I want to summarize the answers I would give to the questions asked above.

First, you cannot truly understand the present without knowing the past.  Most of us have seen movies and/or television shows in which a person loses their memory.  In these movies, the person with amnesia (whether temporary or permanent) does not how to function because they have lost the essential knowledge of who they are and to whom they belong.  Unable to remember the past, they are not equipped to live in the present.  Who we are as individuals is shaped by our experiences in the past.  These experiences, both joyful and sorrowful, and our responses to them are essential to our personal identity.  What is true for individual persons is also true for communities.  Each community, whether large or small, has a history and to understand that community it is essential that you know something of its past.

Secondly, you cannot effectively plan for the future without knowing the past.  In one of my favorite Geico commercials, a group of young adults are running for their lives.  As they seek to escape whatever horror is chasing them, they are given two options: hide behind a hanging wall of chainsaws or drive away in a running car.  They choose to hide behind the chainsaws.  Those of us watching the commercial understand that this is a terrible choice because we have seen chain-saw slasher movies.  We know what is most likely to happen next.  In this case, our knowledge of the past would help us make better decisions about how to living in the future.  This simple analogy applies to human communities.  History gives us the opportunity to look at decisions that others have made and to evaluate their consequences of those choices.  History also helps us understand the root causes of contemporary problems and can guide us in trying to fix them.  An example from my own life can help to explain this point.  I have significant shoulder issues (due to multiple injuries and severe arthritis) that limit my range my motion.  I am also a competitive tennis player.  I have taken lessons from tennis pros that have been helpful and I have taken lessons that have been a waste of my time and money.  The ones that were a waste all suffered from the same problem: the pro never took the time to understand why I was having trouble with my serve.  They knew what I was doing wrong, but their failure to explore my past limited the help they could give..  Without knowing the physical limitations created by my history of injury, their solutions did not help.   What is true for me in my tennis game is likewise true for communities and societies.

My final comment is in answer to the question of: “Why another history course?”  This is a college-level textbook designed for college students.  The goal of the textbook is to help students learn that the history of the United States is very complex.  It will require you to use higher-level critical thinking skills as you encounter aspects of history that you may not have been exposed to.  It will force you to evaluate the attitudes and actions of people in the past objectively.  It will challenge some of your assumptions about our country even as it will reinforce some of your noble beliefs about who we are as Americans.  In this textbook, I do not shy away from addressing some of the deeper conflicts that have plague our country since its founding.  There is no attempt to “sanitize”  the historical record.  There is also no underlying strategy to “demonize” our nation’s historical leaders.  Instead, if I might use the title of one of my favorite movies, this book endeavors to show “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly” in US history so that each one of us can make our own decisions about who we are as Americans, about what we can be proud of, what we can be sorry for, and how we can move into the future to fulfill the dream of becoming “one nation” with “liberty and justice for all.”