U.S. History at the 250th: From the Revolution to the History Wars - Paperback

by Catherine Clinton (Editor), Jim Downs (Editor), Sandra Enríquez (Author)

The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. But does the nation begin in 1776, or do we trace its origins to some point earlier--for example, the arrival of the first enslaved people in 1619 or the initial settlement of Indigenous people? What's at stake with establishing a date that marks the nation's origins? Where does the history of the nation begin? In colonial New England, the Chesapeake, or in the Southwest?

In this unprecedented volume, leading thinkers come together to debate these--and many other--issues. Their conversation shows that U.S history is not just about what happened but who gets to tell the story and the political implications of the narratives we tell. The participants include two Pulitzer Prize winners: Nikole Hannah-Jones, who created the 1619 Project and ignited a national conversation about slavery and the nation's founding; and Annette Gordon-Reed, who documented Thomas Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemmings. The other specialists include experts in Asian American, civil rights, Native American, Latino, LGBT, and early American history.

Author Biography

Sandra Enríquez (Author)
SANDRA ENRIQUEZ is an Associate Professor of History and the Director of the Public History Emphasis at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Enríquez is the author of ¡El Barrio No Se Vende!: Grassroots Activism and Revitalization in El Paso

Annette Gordon-Reed (Author)
ANNETTE GORDON-REED is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University. She has won sixteen book prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. She is the author of six books, and editor of two. She was the Vyvyan Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History at the University of Oxford (Queen's College) 2014-2015, and was appointed an Honorary Fellow at Queen's in 2021. Gordon-Reed served as the 2018-2019 President of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic and is currently president of the Ames Foundation.

Sandy Grande (Author)
SANDY GRANDE is a Professor of Political Science and Native American and Indigenous Studies at the University of Connecticut. She was recently awarded the Ford Foundation, Senior Fellowship (2019-2020) for a project on Indigenous Elders and aging. Grande is the author of Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought, and she has also published numerous book chapters and articles. She is a founding member of New York Stands for Standing Rock, a group of scholars and activists that forwards the aims of Native American and Indigenous sovereignty and resurgence.

Nikole Hannah-Jones (Author)
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist at The New York Times Magazine, the creator of The 1619 Project and the Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at Howard University. Her work has also earned her the MacArthur Award as well as a Peabody, an Emmy and three National Magazine Awards. She is a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Erika Lee (Author)
ERIKA LEE is the Bae Family Professor of History and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at Harvard University and Past President of the Organization of American Historians. She is the author of several prize-winning books, including The Making of Asian America, winner of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in Adult Non-Fiction, and America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States, winner of the American Book Award.

Robert Parkinson (Author)
ROBERT PARKINSON is Professor of History at Binghamton University and the author of Thirteen Clocks: How Race United the Colonies and Made the Declaration of Independence and Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier.

Marc Stein (Author)
MARC STEIN is the Jamie and Phyllis Pasker Professor of History at San Francisco State University. He is the author of City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves: Lesbian and Gay Philadelphia, 1945-1972; Sexual Injustice: Supreme Court Decisions from Griswold to Roe; Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement; The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History; Queer Public History: Essays on Scholarly Activism; and Bicentennial: A Philadelphia Story.

William Sturkey (Author)
WILLIAM STURKEY is an associate professor of history at the the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of Hattiesburg: An American City in Black and White and To Write in the Light of Freedom: The Newspapers of the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Schools.

Catherine Clinton (Editor)
CATHERINE CLINTON is the Denman Professor of American History at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She has served as president of the Southern Historical Association, is an elected member of the Society of American Historians, and is a recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship. She is the author and editor of more than two dozen volumes, including Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom; Mrs. Lincoln: A Life; Stepdaughters of History; and Civil War Stories (Georgia).

Jim Downs (Editor)
JIM DOWNS is the Gilder Lehrman-National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of History at Gettysburg College, a 2025-26 Guggenheim Fellow, and the director of the African American History Program at the Library Company of Philadelphia. In addition to coediting Beyond Freedom: Disrupting the History of Emancipation and Connexions: Histories of Race and Sex in North America, he has authored Maladies of Empire: How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Transformed Medicine; and Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering During the Civil War and Reconstruction.