v. I. To 1877. Conquest and colliding worlds ; The Southern colonies in British America ; Colonial New England and the middle colonies in British America ; The American Revolution ; The making of the Constitution ; Competing visions of national development in the early national period ; Foreign policy, Western movement, and Indian removal in the early nineteenth century ; The transportation, market, and communication revolutions of the early nineteenth century ; Nationalism, sectionalism, and expansionism in the age of Jackson ; Reform and the Great Awakening in the early nineteenth century ; Commercial development and immigration in the North at midcentury ; Agriculture and slavery in the South at midcentury ; Careening toward civil war ; The Civil War ; Reconstruction --
v. II. Since 1865. Reconstruction ; Western settlement and the frontier ; Industrialization, workers, and the new immigration ; Imperialism and world power ; The Progressive movement ; America in World War I ; Crossing a cultural divide : the twenties ; The Depression, the New Deal and Franklin D. Roosevelt ; The ordeal of World War II ; The Cold War and the nuclear age ; The postwar "boom" : affluence and anxiety ; "We can do better" : the civil rights revolution ; The sixties : left, right, and the culture wars ; Vietnam and the downfall of presidents ; The rise of the new right ; End of the Cold War, terrorism, and globalization.

For each chapter, this book contains a wide selection a wide selection of primary sources as well as two essays by historians.