A Short History of The United StatesThe history of the United States has been a trial in democracy for more than 236 years. Subjects and concerns that were tackled in the early years continue to be addressed and resolved today: big government versus small government, individual rights versus group rights, free markets versus regulated commerce and labor, support for other countries versus isolationism. The expectations for American democracy have always been elevated, and the reality has sometimes been disappointing. Despite these occasional setbacks, the nation has grown and flourished, through a recurrent process of adjustment and compromise.
United States History: Early HistoryDuring the world’s most recent Ice Age, which occurred roughly 35,000 years ago, much of the world’s water was frozen into big sheets of ice. A land bridge, which was estimated to be as wide as 1,500 kilometers (932 miles), then connected Asia and North America. Fast forward to 12,000 years ago, and you’ll find there is evidence that humans existed in the region that is now the United States, as well as in other parts of North and South America.
The first settlers in what is now America crossed the land bridge from Asia. Historians believe they lived in the part of North America that is now Alaska for thousands of years. Later they moved south into today’s mainland United States, settling along the Pacific Ocean in the Northwest, in the mountains and deserts of the Southwest, and along the Mississippi River in the Midwest.
Known as the Hohokam, Adenans, Hopewellians, and Anasazi, these early groups of human settlers built crude villages and began growing crops. Their lives were connected to the land; and family and community were very important to them. Researchers have shown they relied on storytelling as a way to share information, as well as picture writing known as hieroglyphics. The Native Americans prized nature as a spiritual force, traded with other tribes for food and other needed goods, and created enormous piles of earth in the shapes of snakes, birds and/or pyramids. They also fought regularly, largely due to land disputes. Historians are not certain why these early humans disappeared, but they were replaced by other Native American tribes—the Zuni, Hopi, etc.—who prospered for hundreds of years. By the time the first Europeans arrived in what is now the United Sates roughly two million people inhabited the region.
United States History: European Exploration of AmericaAccording to historians, the first Europeans to arrive in the “New World” were the Norse. They sailed from Greenland, where Erik Ericson (Erik the Red) had established a settlement in 985. In 1001, Ericson’s son, Leif Ericson, explored the northeast coast of what is now Canada. It was there, in Newfoundland, Canada, that archaeologists found traces of the Norsemen’s explorations.
Nearly 500 years would pass before other Europeans reached North America, and another 100 years for them to build permanent settlements. The early explorers did not originally set out to find America, nor did they know it even existed. Upon setting sail they were originally looking for seagoing trade routes between Europe and Asia. Even Christopher Columbus, who is often credited with the discovery of America, never reached what is now the mainland United States. An Italian, whose voyage was paid for by the Spanish Queen Isabella, Columbus merely reached some of the islands of the Caribbean in 1492. When the Europeans finally arrived in America—mostly from Spain and Portugal, but also from France, England and Holland—they discovered and a land with all the vast natural resources needed to create permanent settlements.
In 1497, an English explorer by the name of John Cabot arrived on Canada’s eastern seaboard, establishing a British claim to land in North America. During the 16 century, Spain sponsored multiple explorations to the New World, claiming more land in the Americas than did any other country. In 1513, Juan Ponce de Leon landed in Florida. Several years later, Hernando De Soto also landed in Florida and conducted explorations all the way to the Mississippi River to the northeast. Spain conquered Mexico in 1522, and in 1540, a Spanish explorer named Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, in search of the mythical Seven Cities of Cibola, traveled north to the Grand Canyon in Arizona and into the Great Plains. Other Europeans, including Giovanni da Verrazano, Jacques Cartier, and Amerigo Vespucci, for whom the two American continents are named, explored further north. The first European settlement in North America was Spanish, founded in what is now St. Augustine in Florida. Thirteen British colonies to the north would later be established, marking the beginning of the formation of the United States of America.
United States History: The Colonial PeriodThe majority of people who came to the British colonies in the 17 century were of English descent. Others came from the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, France, Scotland and Northern Island. Some came to avoid religious or political persecution in their mother country, while others came looking for economic opportunity. Some had to work as servants to pay back the cost of their trip before gaining their freedom, and some, like black Africans, were brought here as slaves. In 1690, 250,000 people had settled in America—a number that would jump to 2.5 million one century later in 1790.
Over time the 13 colonies that comprised America were established within three distinct regions. Most of the initial settlements were founded along the Atlantic Coast and on the rivers that flowed into the ocean. The first of these regions was in the Northeast, where, trees which could be used for timber covered the hills, and water power was widely available. This region, which would take on the name New England, included the states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Here the economy was based on timber, fishing, ship-building, and various trade. 8
The second region is known as the Middle Colonies and included the states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. Here, due largely to the proximity to the Atlantic ocean, the weather was milder and the countryside was more varied, allowing people to find success in the fields of industry and agriculture. The society in the Middle Colonies was more diverse and sophisticated than that of the other two regions. People who settled in New York, for example, came from all over Europe, including many families of great wealth.
The third colonial region was known as the Southern Colonies, which included the states of Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. Due to the temperate climate in this region of the New World, the growing season was long and the soil was fertile. Most who settled here were simple farmers—farmers that often worked their small farms themselves
The wealthy landowners, however, boasted large plantations on which crops such as cotton and tobacco were grown for commerce. Many of these landowners used slaves to work the fields in exchange for food and shelter.
The relationships forged between settlers and the Native Americans (also called Indians) were good and bad. In some regions of the country, the two groups traded and, for the most part, were friendly. In most cases, however, especially as the settlements began to grow larger and larger, the Native Americans were compelled by force to move from the colonial regions, with most of them eventually heading east across the Mississippi River.
As the settlements grew, governments were established in each of the original 13 colonies—governments based on the British system that involved citizen participation. Back in Britain, the “Glorious Revolution of 1688-89” limited the king’s powers and added additional authority to the citizens. Meanwhile, the colonists in America began to observe these changes, and created colonial assemblies which claimed the right to act as local parliaments. These government bodies passed laws that limited the authority of the royal governor (a representative of the British monarchy) and increased their own authority. Major disagreements between the royal governors and the assemblies continued for several years, as the colonists began to realize that their interests often were different from those of the British government. Initially, the colonists fought for a form of self-government within a British commonwealth, but resistance from the British government ultimately sparked a call for total independence.
United States History: American IndependenceThe road toward American Independence was a rocky one; a road based on the idea of true democracy and liberalism. As the colonies continued to evolve and gain in population these ideas would eventually translate into action.
Following a costly war in the 1750s, in which England narrowly defeated the French, the American colonists were asked to provide monetary compensation to Britain to help pay for the monetary losses caused by the war and further establish the British Empire. Naturally, these policies, which restricted the colonists’ way of life and their own economic growth, were not very popular to say the least. Some of these policies included the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which restricted the colonists from settling any new land; the Currency Act of 1764, which prohibited the colonists from printing money; the Quartering Act of 1765, mandating colonists to provide food and shelter to royal soldiers; and the Stamp Act of 1765, which set a tax on all legal papers, licenses, newspapers and leases.
Angered over these prohibitive policies, the colonies united to form an organized resistance movement. Their main issue that sparked this movement was their inability to participate in the very government that taxed them, a concept known as “taxation without representation.” In October of 1765, delegates from nine of the thirteen colonies met in New York and passed resolutions banning the practice of unfair taxation. This move satisfied most of the people, however, a smaller group of radicals, which included Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, pushed for complete independence from Britain. Adams penned numerous newspaper articles on the subject and made scores of speeches, ultimately helping groups to organize as part of the revolutionary movement. In 1773, a tea tax imposed by the British angered a group of colonial traders, who would ultimately sneak on to three British ships in the Boston harbor and throw its entire cargo of tea overboard. This renowned and very memorable act of resistance came to be known as the Boston Tea Party.
In 1774, delegates of all the colonies except Georgia met in Philadelphia for the First Continental Congress. Although all were angry over the British policies being imposed on them, the group was split between Loyalists, who wanted to remain subjects of the Crown, Moderates, who wanted to compromise and build a better relationship with England; and Revolutionaries, who wanted total independence. The latter group began stockpiling weapons in preparation for what they knew would be a bloody fight for independence.
The American Revolution and the War of Independence from Britain began in April of 1775 with a small fight between British troops and colonists. At Lexington those troops met armed colonists called Minutemen, named so because they could be prepared to fight on a moment’s notice. From that small battle sprouted a full-scale war for Independence; a seven-year war that resulted in the death and wounding of thousands of soldiers on both sides.
Later in 1775, Colonial representatives met again in Philadelphia for the Second Continental Congress. They established a committee to create a document highlighting the colonies complaints against the king, and carefully explained their decision to separate from Britain. Thomas Jefferson was the primary writer of this document—a document entitled the Declaration of Independence that announced to the world the birth of a new nation; a nation based on ideals of freedom and universal human rights. The Declaration of Independence was accepted and ratified by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. That date, now known as the Fourth of July or Independence Day, has since been celebrated annually in the U.S. in honor of the nation’s birthday.
United States History: The American ConstitutionIn 1783, the 13 original colonies officially became the United States of America. Prior to the end of the war, the colonies had developed Articles of Confederation—a plan to work together as one nation—but the connections between the 13 colonies were too fragmented. At the time, each state had their own money, army, navy and trade systems, resulting in an America that was essentially a nation of 13 countries.
Many of the colonists, including Alexander Hamilton of New York, believed that the Articles of Confederation, while well intentioned, needed to be rethought. Thus, in May of 1787, delegates gathered once again in Philadelphia with the aim of drafting a United States Constitution. After months of work, in September of 1787, the American Constitution was ratified, creating a three-branch system of central government and guaranteeing basic freedoms and liberty to all American citizens.
United States History: The United States of America: The Early YearsOn April 30, 1789, George Washington became the first president of the United States of America. Washington had served as a general in the War of Independence and was well-respected throughout the new union. With the assistance of the Congress, he created the Treasury, Justice and War departments. Together, the heads of these agencies—and the others that would later be created—form the President’s Cabinet. Washington served as president for a total of 8 years—two four-year terms.
Following Washington as President of the United States were John Adams and then Thomas Jefferson. These two presidents had dissimilar ideas about the role the government should play in the lives of Americans, which ultimately led to the creation of political parties. Alexander Hamilton led the Federalist Party, whose supporters included people involved with trade and manufacturing. They believed in a strong central government, with less power in the hands of the states. Most of their support was in the Northern regions, where most American manufacturing took place. The Republican Party, whose supporters included farmers primarily in the American South, was led by Thomas Jefferson. This party opposed a strong central government, believing the states should have more authority.
For the first twenty years of its existence, the United States, while friendly to all nations, remained neutral and loyal to none. However, France and Britain were again at war, threatening the security of the United States. America would ultimately go to war with Britain in 1812—the War of 1812—where the battles were mostly contained to the northeastern states along the American coast. One unit of the British army made its way to Washington D.C., the new U.S. capital, where it proceeded to set fire to the presidential mansion, forcing them President James Madison to flee the White House as it burned. America would eventually win the War of 1812, which culminated in the Treaty of Ghent of 1815. Among other things, the treaty ensured that Britain would not establish colonies south of the Canadian border.
By 1815, America was running much more smoothly, aided by a Constitution that provided a balance of liberty and order. The country enjoyed a low national debt, peace, prosperity and social progress. An important addition to American foreign policy was the Monroe Doctrine, named for President James Monroe. Among other provisions outlined in this document, the doctrine announced the solidarity of the newly independent nations in Central and South America, which served as a warning to Europe not to seek colonies in Latin America.
The United States doubled in size with the Louisiana Purchase, and grew even larger with the purchase of Florida from the Spaniards. From 1816 to 1821, six new states were created, and between 1812 and 1852, the population of the country tripled in size. However, as the country grew, differences between the states became more evident and problematic. The United States was a country of civilized cities and lawless frontiers, one that loved the idea of freedom yet also tolerated slavery.
Slavery became a major issue in the 1850s and early 1860s. Most Northerners, while morally against the idea of slavery, did not want to prevent it in the rural south, but they did oppose slavery in the new territories. The Southerners believed that these territories had the right to decide for themselves whether slavery would be allowed. It was at this time that a young politician from Illinois came along, a man named Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln believed that slavery was not a local issue, but a national one. He initially agreed that the South could keep its slaves, but he fought to keep slavery out of the territories. His hope was that over time slavery would end of its own volition, as reflected in his famous quote: “A house divided against itself cannot stand. This government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free.”
The South threatened to leave the Union if Lincoln became president, which he did in 1860, becoming the 16 President of the United States. Prior to delivering his First Inaugural Address in 1861, seven southern states had already seceded from the Union, tensions remained high between the North and the South, and the country was on the brink of Civil War.
United States History: Civil War and ReconstructionWith tensions between the North and South at an all-time high, the American Civil War erupted in 1861, with the first shots being fired at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. Feeling the country, also known as the “Union,” was threatening their state and individual rights, the people of the South claimed the right to disengage from the Union and eventually formed its own Confederacy. Determined to keep the nation unified, President Lincoln led the Northern States into what would become the deadliest war in American history.
During the Civil War, both sides had certain advantages: the North had more raw materials for producing war supplies and a better railway system, while the South had more experienced military leaders and a better knowledge of the battlefields, as most of the battles were fought in Southern territory. The Civil War spanned 4 years in total, with tens of thousands of soldiers engaged. The bloodiest day of the war came on September 17, 1862, during the Battle of Antietam in Maryland. The Southern forces, led by General Robert E. Lee, failed to force back the Union troops led by General George McClellan. Lee escaped with his army, but the defeat signaled a major turnaround in the war.
Later in 1862, President Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation that effectively freed all slaves in the Confederate states, many of whom then joined the Union army. With the extra manpower and better supplies, the North began winning one important battle after another. Near the end of the war, General William T. Sherman and his troops marched across the southern states of Georgia and South Carolina, leaving a path of scorched destruction in their wake. This event marked the end of the war, and General Lee officially surrendered in Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant in April of 1865.
Less than a week after the South surrendered, a Confederate sympathizer named John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Lincoln as he enjoyed a dramatic play at Ford’s theater in Washington D.C. Vice President Andrew Johnson was sworn in as the 17 president of the United States, and faced the challenge of reuniting the country in a period that is known as “Post-War-Reconstruction.”
President Johnson was a southerner by birth, and after taking over for President Lincoln he issued many pardons to southern soldiers and resistance leaders and gave them back their political rights. By the close of 1865, most of the Confederate states canceled the acts of secession but refused to abolish slavery. In addition, all of the southern states, except Tennessee, refused to give full citizenship to African American men. In response to this, the Republican led Congress passed a law barring rebel leaders from holding political office. The Union generals that now governed the South also blocked anyone who would not take an oath of loyalty to the Union from voting in elections. Congress strongly supported the rights of African Americans, but President Johnson, a southerner, tried to stop many of the policies aimed to help them. As a result, the House of Representatives impeached President Johnson, but because the Senate came up one vote shy of the two-thirds majority needed to remove him from office, he was allowed to finish his term, and eventually began giving in to the Republican led Congress.
During Reconstruction, the Southern states were prohibited from sending representatives to Congress until they passed constitutional amendments abolishing slavery, giving black males the right to vote and granting all citizens—white and black—equal protection under the law. For a time the Southern states abided by these new policies, but once the Union General-Governors left the South, especially during the 1870s, white Southerners began to deny the newly-freed slaves their rights. Black men had the right to vote, but the threat of violence made them afraid to use their suffrage. Southern states introduced laws of segregation, a system that required black Americans and white Americans to use separate public facilities. Blacks had to drink from a different water fountain than whites, were denied entry into restaurants and other businesses, and were forced to sit at the back of the bus when using public transportation. Naturally, the facilities for blacks were nowhere near as nice as those reserved for whites, and this type of almost inhumane segregation would continue for the next 100 years, finally becoming a national issue towards the latter half of the 20 century.
United States History: The Post-Reconstruction EraThe Post-Reconstruction era in the United States was a time of growth and transformation: the frontier became tamer; cities grew in size and number; factories, steel mills and railroads were built; and immigrants flocked to the United States with hopes of a better existence. The era is appropriately nicknamed the “Age of Inventions,” a time during which Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone; Thomas Edison invented the light bulb; and George Eastman invented the moving picture, later called a movie. Prior to 1860, the government had issued 36,000 patents in total, but from 1860-1890, 440,000 new patents were given to a wave of inventors and scientists.
Farming was still America’s primary economic sector, and business was booming. New discoveries helped scientists improve seeds; and new machines, like Eli Whitney’s Cotton Gin began doing the same work that once took hundreds of hours of manpower. As a result, Americans produced enough crops to not only sustain themselves, but to sell to overseas markets for a hefty profit.
Near the end of the 19 century, many of the European powers began to colonize Africa and parts of Asia. Many people thought that America should do the same, while others resisted these efforts as imperialistic. Following a short war with Spain in 1898, the United States took control over many Spanish possessions, including Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. From an official standpoint, the U.S. encouraged these colonies to become self-governing, but in reality the United States maintained their control.
Idealism became the tone of American foreign policy during the late 1800s, but it coexisted with the desire to prevent European powers from acquiring any territory that might enable them to project military power towards the U.S. As the 20 century dawned, America had officially emerged as one of the world’s most powerful countries.
United States History: World War I and the Great DepressionFollowing the Assassination of the Arch Duke Ferdinand in 1914, World War I erupted, a battle that initially pitted Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey against Britain, France, Italy and Russia. Other nations would eventually join the conflict, and eventually the war reached across the Atlantic to affect the United States. The Navies of Britain and Germany blocked American shipping lanes, and in 1915, nearly 130 Americans were killed when a German submarine sunk the British ocean liner Lusitania. America’s president at the time, Woodrow Wilson, demanded a stop to the attacks, but when they started again in 1917, the United States declared war on Germany and their allies.
By the time World War I was over, nearly 2 million American soldiers had helped to defeat the German and Austrian-Hungarian forces. The war officially came to an end on November 11, 1918, when a truce was signed at the Palace of Versailles in France. President Wilson adopted a “14-Point Plan,” which included the creation of the League of Nations.
After the war, the United States had problems with racial tension, struggling farms, and labor unrest. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, fear grew among Americans regarding the spread of communism, a fear that was nicknamed the “Red Scare.” Despite these problems, the U.S. enjoyed a brief period of prosperity. Many families purchased their first automobile, radio and refrigerator; women were granted the right to vote; and the musical style of Jazz was born. This period, or decade, of prosperity is appropriately nicknamed the “Roaring 20s.”
The boon of the 1920s would literally come crashing down on October 23, 1929—Black Tuesday—when the stock market collapsed, often seen as the event that ushered in the Great Depression. This bleak period in American history saw businesses and factories close, banks fail and farms depleted. By the winter of 1932, nearly a quarter of American adults were jobless.
The elections of 1932 saw the incumbent President Herbert Hoover lose to Franklin Roosevelt, who would later become one of the most influential presidents in American history.
United States History: The New Deal and the Second World WarWith the country in grave economic trouble, President Roosevelt proposed a “New Deal” to bring a close to the Great Depression, and during his first 100 days of office passed more legislation to that end than any president in United States history. The New Deal included many new U.S. programs: bank accounts became insured, new stock market rules were implemented, and workers gained the right to form unions to protect their rights. Farmers received much-needed aid, and people were hired by the government to plant trees, clean waterways and perform other projects designed to beautify America. The Social Security System was implemented to help the poor, the elderly and the disabled; and many Americans previously out of work found jobs to support their family.
Although the programs of the New Deal sparked a slight uptick in the economy, it wasn’t until the onset of the Second World War that Americans would fully recover economically. Although America had initially adopted a policy of neutrality while Germany, Italy and Japan were attacking other countries, the gloves came off, so to speak, when Japan attacked an American Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 7, 1941, marking the beginning of the United States’ involvement in World War II.
As Americans fought both in Japan and Europe, American industry focused heavily on the war effort. With most of the men away at war, women were enlisted into factories and built over 400,000 items of war machinery, from aircraft, to cargo ships, to tanks. American troops fought with Great Britain and the Soviet Union against the Nazi threat in Europe. From the time that Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland in 1939 (Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941) until the German surrender in 1945, millions of people died on the battlefield, and millions more (mainly Jews and other minorities) were killed in Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust.
The fighting continued in the Asian/Pacific Theater, even after the war had ended in Europe. These latter battles were among the bloodiest for American forces, as Japan refused to surrender even as American soldiers were approaching its doorstep. Most of the American people had had their fill of war, and believed invading Japan would cost far too many lives. The U.S. president at the time, Harry S. Truman, agreed with this notion, and decided instead to launch the world’s first (and still only) nuclear strike on Japan, first on Hiroshima and then on Nagasaki. The war finally ended in 1945, but the threat of nuclear weapons ending up in the hands of any United States enemy would soon cause widespread fear among the American population.
United States History: The Cold War Era to the PresentFollowing World War II, the United States and Great Britain had long-term disagreements with the Soviet Union over the future of Europe, most of which had been freed from Nazi occupation through their joint effort. The democratic United States and Communist Russia both wanted to establish governments that were friendly to their interests in Europe, and each believed that their system could best ensure its security, and produce the most liberty, equality and prosperity in the region. This period of disagreement has come to be known as the Cold War.
Much of Europe laid in ruin after World War II, and the U.S. feared that postwar economic weakness would increase the popularity of communism. To try and avoid this, the United States offered Europeans nations, including the Soviet Union, large sums of money to help them rebuild. Most Western European nations gladly accepted these offerings, but the communist nations of Eastern Europe refused. By 1952, through a program to rebuild Western Europe (called the Marshall Plan), the United States had invested $13.3 billion. Meanwhile, the Soviet military forced communist governments on nations in Central and Eastern Europe. The United States wanted to limit Soviet expansion, and demanded Soviet withdrawal from northern Iran. When the Soviets blockaded West Berlin, a U.S. airlift brought millions of tons of supplies to the divided city.
In 1949, the communist forces of Mao Zedong took control of China. Communist North Korea invaded South Korea with the support of China and the Soviet Union in 1950. The United States got support from the United Nations, formerly the League of Nations, for military intervention, and a bloody war—the Korean War—continued into 1953. Although an armistice eventually was signed, U.S. troops remain in South Korea to this day.
In the 1960s, the United States aided South Vietnam in its defense against communist North Vietnam in what would later be known as the Vietnam War. Thousands of American soldiers were killed and/or wounded in this (very unpopular) war, and with no foreseeable end to the conflict in sight, all American troops were called home by the end of 1973. Despite our help, in 1975 North Vietnam would eventually conquer the depleted armies of South Vietnam, prompting thousands of Vietnamese to relocate to the United States.
The 1960s through the 1980s was a period of major cultural change. Segregation, which had long affected the South, was officially abolished, thanks largely to the Civil Rights Movement and its remarkable leader Martin Luther King Jr. Women grew angry that they lacked the same opportunity as men, and women like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem worked on laws that would ultimately grant women more educational and economic equality. Hispanic farm workers, under the leadership of Cesar Chavez, also saw major life improvements, allowing them to form unions to help improve their working conditions and compensation.
As the new millennium dawned, newly elected President George W. Bush intended to focus his efforts on improving education, the United States economy and the Social Security system. This focus changed, however, on September 11, 2001, when foreign terrorists crashed four United States passenger planes: two into the World Trade Center in New York, one into the U.S. Pentagon in Washington D.C., and the last into a field in rural Pennsylvania, after the brave passengers fought back against the suicide bombers.
President Bush declared war on worldwide terrorism and sent United States troops into Afghanistan and Iraq. These moves initially garnered nationwide approval from the American people, but as the wars dragged on, the people grew increasingly uneasy with his policies. In 2008, the American citizens chose Barack Obama as their new president—the first African American to ever hold that office. Once in office, Obama focused on improving the worst economic recession Americans had faced since the Great Depression of the 1930s—a focus he maintains today in his second (and legally, last) term in office.


This text is a comprehensive introduction to the vital subject of American government and politics. Governments decide who gets what, when, how (See Harold D. Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How, [New York: McGraw-Hill, 1936]); they make policies and pass laws that are binding on all a society’s members; they decide about taxation and spending, benefits and costs, even life and death.Governments possess power—the ability to gain compliance and to get people under their jurisdiction to obey them—and they may exercise their power by using the police and military to enforce their decisions. However, power need not involve the exercise of force or compulsion; people often obey because they think it is in their interest to do so, they have no reason to disobey, or they fear punishment. Above all, people obey their government because it has authority; its power is seen by people as rightfully held, as legitimate. People can grant their government legitimacy because they have been socialized to do so; because there are processes, such as elections, that enable them to choose and change their rulers; and because they believe that their governing institutions operate justly.Politics is the process by which leaders are selected and policy decisions are made and executed. It involves people and groups, both inside and outside of government, engaged in deliberation and debate, disagreement and conflict, cooperation and consensus, and power struggles.In covering American government and politics, this text introduces the intricacies of the Constitution, the complexities of federalism, the meanings of civil liberties, and the conflicts over civil rights;explains how people are socialized to politics, acquire and express opinions, and participate in political life; describes interest groups, political parties, and elections—the intermediaries that link people to government and politics; details the branches of government and how they operate; and shows how policies are made and affect people’s lives.
This book is suited for Business Writing, Business English or Business Research/Report Writing courses.Basics of Written Business Communication presents basic business communication concepts, vocabulary, models, and exercises in a clear, practical, and engaging way. The author provides a set of core chapters intended to provide a highly focused introduction to the field. Then, he provides an optional series of modules that provide instructors with complete flexibility to emphasize additional topics of their choice.
The Changing Story gives you assignments, resources, and examples to use in your teaching and learning. It will also help you think of ways digital stories can be used in your teaching, and help students harness the power of visual storytelling.
College Success takes a fresh look at what it means, in today’s world, with today’s students, to be successful in college.Although many of the topics included—from study skills to personal health, from test-taking to managing time and money—will look familiar to those who have used student success texts that have been around for many editions, College Success takes a new approach. The focus is on realistic, practical tools for the students who need them. This is a book designed, frankly, for students who may have difficulty with traditional college texts. The style is direct and to the point. Information is presented concisely and as simply as possible. This is not a weighty tome that discusses student success—this is a manual for doing it.College student demographics have changed considerably in recent decades. More than a third of all students enroll not directly from high school but after a delay of some years. More students are working and have families. More students come from varied ethnic and cultural backgrounds. More students are the first in their family to attend college. More students have grown up with electronic media and now read and think in ways different from the previous generation. With these and so many other cultural changes, more students are not well prepared for a college education with the study skills and life skills they need to become successful students.For each student to get the most out of College Success and their college experience they must understand who they are as it relates to college. To that end, in every chapter students explore themselves, because success starts with recognizing your own strengths and weaknesses. Students make their own goals based on this self-assessment, determining what success in college really means for them as individuals. Interactive activities then help students learn the choices available to them and the possibilities for improving their skills. Skills are presented in step-by-step processes, tips for success in manageable highlighted displays. Most important, students always see the value of what they are reading—and how they can begin to apply it immediately in their own lives.College Success is intended for use in Freshmen Orientation, Study Skills or Student Success courses. A 2009 study revealed that currently nationwide, 34% of college freshmen do not return to their college for their sophomore year. This book is designed to help change that.
Communication in the Real World: An Introduction to Communication Studies overviews the time-tested conceptual foundations of the field, while incorporating the latest research and cutting-edge applications of these basics. Each chapter will include timely, concrete, and real-life examples of communication concepts in action. A key feature of this book is the integration of content regarding diversity and organizational communication in each chapter through examples and/or discrete sub-sections. Discussions of diversity are not relegated to feature boxes. Also integrated into the content are examples that are inclusive in terms of race, gender, sexuality, ability, age, marital status, religion, and other diverse identity characteristics.
The author's goals in writing Exploring Business were simple: (1) introduce students to business in an exciting way and (2) provide faculty with a fully developed teaching package that allows them to do the former. Toward those ends, the following features are included in this text:1- Integrated (Optional) Nike Case Study: A Nike case study is available for instructors who wish to introduce students to business using an exciting and integrated case. Through an in-depth study of a real company, students learn about the functional areas of business and how these areas fit together. Studying a dynamic organization on a real-time basis allows students to discover the challenges that it faces, and exposes them to critical issues affecting the business, such as globalization, ethics and social responsibility, product innovation, diversity, supply chain management, and e-business.2- A Progressive (Optional) Business Plan: Having students develop a business plan in the course introduces students to the excitement and challenges of starting a business and helps them discover how the functional areas of business interact. This textbook package includes an optionalintegrated business plan project modeled after one refined by the author and her teaching team over the past ten years.3- AACSB Emphasis: The text provides end-of-chapter questions, problems, and cases that ask students to do more than regurgitate information. Most require students to gather information, assess a situation, think about it critically, and reach a conclusion. Each chapter presents ten Questions and Problems as well as five cases on areas of skill and knowledge endorsed by AACSB: Learning on the Web, Career Opportunities, The Ethics Angle, Team-Building Skills, and The Global View. More than 70% of end-of-chapter items help students build skills in areas designated as critical by AACSB, including analytical skills, ethical awareness and reasoning abilities, multicultural understanding and globalization, use of information technology, and communications and team oriented skills. Each AACSB inspired exercise is identified by an AACSB tag and a note indicating the relevant skill area.4- Author-Written Instructor Manual (IM): For the past eleven years, Karen Collins has been developing, coordinating and teaching (to over 3,500 students) an Introduction to Business course. Sections of the course have been taught by a mix of permanent faculty, graduate students, and adjuncts.
This book is suitable for an undergraduate or MBA level Financial Accounting course.
The authors bring their collective teaching wisdom to bear in this book not by changing "the message"(financial accounting content), but by changing "the messenger" (the way the content is presented). The approach centers around utilizing the Socratic method, or simply put, asking and answering questions. The reason that this approach continues to be glorified after thousands of years is simple - it engages students and stresses understanding over memorization. So this text covers standard topics in a standard sequence, but does so through asking a carefully constructed series of questions along with their individual answers.
Human Resource Management by Laura Portolese Dias teaches HRM strategies and theories that any managerŃnot just those in HRŃneeds to know about recruiting, selecting, training, and compensating people.Most students will be managing people at some point in their careers and not necessarily in a human resource management capacity. As businesses cut back, they may outsource HR duties to outside vendors. Or, in smaller businesses, the HR department is sometimes small or non-existent, and managers from other departments have to perform their own HRM. Therefore, teaching HRM from the perspective of a general manager, in addition to an HR manager, provides more relevance to studentsŐ careers and will give them a competitive advantage in the workplace.
Immigrant and Refugee Families: Global Perspectives on Displacement and Resettlement Experiences uses a family systems lens to discuss challenges and strengths of immigrant and refugee families in the United States. Chapters address immigration policy, human rights issues, economic stress, mental health and traumatic stress, domestic violence, substance abuse, family resilience, and methods of integration.
The definitive text for the information search and evaluation process as practiced by news and strategic communication message producers. Currently used at the University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communication; JOUR 3004W/V, Information for Mass Communication.
Information Systems: A Manager’s Guide to Harnessing Technology V1.2 is intended for use in undergraduate and/or graduate courses in Management Information Systems and Information Technology.Version 1.2 of John's book retains the same structure and theory of version 1.1, but refreshes key statistics, examples, and brings case material up to date (vital when covering firms that move as fast as Facebook, Google, and Netflix). Adopting version 1.2 guarantees your students will have the most current text on the market, drawing real and applicable lessons from material that will keep your class offerings current and accessible.One of BusinessWeek’s "Professors of the Year", John Gallaugher of Boston College, brings you a brand new Management Information Systems textbook that teaches students how he or she will experience IS from a Managers perspective first hand through interesting coverage and bleeding-edge cases.Get involved with John's community by visiting and subscribing to his blog, The Week In Geek, where courseware, technology and strategy intersect and joining his Ning IT Community site where you can get more resources to teach Information Systems.Shockingly, at a time when technology regularly appears on the cover of every major business publication, students find IS among the least appealing of management disciplines.The teaching approach in Information Systems: A Manager’s Guide to Harnessing Technology V 1.2 can change this. The text offers a proven approach that has garnered student praise, increased IS enrollment, and engaged students to think deeper and more practically about the space where business and technology meet. Every topic is related to specific business examples, so students gain an immediate appreciation of its importance. Rather than lead with technical topics, the book starts with strategic thinking, focusing on big-picture issues that have confounded experts but will engage students. And while chapters introduce concepts, cases on approachable, exciting firms across industries further challenge students to apply what they've learned, asking questions like:Why was NetFlix able to repel Blockbuster and WalMart? How did Harrah's Casino's become twice as profitable as comparably-sized Caesar's, enabling the former to acquire the latter? How does Spain's fashion giant Zara, a firm that shuns the sort of offshore manufacturing used by every other popular clothing chain, offer cheap fashions that fly off the shelves, all while achieving growth rates and profit margins that put Gap to shame? Why do technology markets often evolve into winner-take-all or winner take-most scenarios? And how can managers compete when these dynamics are present? Why is Google more profitable than Disney? How much is Facebook really worthThe Information Systems course and discipline have never seemed more relevant, more interesting, and more exciting. Gallaugher's textbook can help teachers make students understand why.
This textbook introduces readers to the idea of cooperation and mutualism. Cooperatives and mutuals are participatory organizations in which members participate in control and governance, receive economic benefits through patronage refunds or net income, and become owners through equity. These mutual-benefit organizations exist alongside non-profit organizations and investor-benefit organizations through the global economy.
Teaching the strategic management course can be a challenge for many professors. In most business schools, strategic management is a ŇcapstoneÓ course that requires students to draw on insights from various functional courses they have completed (such as marketing, finance, and accounting) in order to understand how top executives make the strategic decisions that drive whether organizations succeed or fail. Although students have taken these functional courses, many students have very little experience with major organizational choices. It is this inexperience that can undermine many studentsŐ engagement in the course.
Organizational Behavior bridges the gap between theory and practice with a distinct "experiential" approach.
On average, a worker in the USA will change jobs 10 times in 20 years. In order to succeed in this type of career situation, individuals need to be armed with the tools necessary to be life-long learners. To that end, this book is not be about giving students all the answers to every situation they may encounter when they start their first job or as they continue up the career ladder. Instead, this book gives students the vocabulary, framework, and critical thinking skills necessary to diagnose situations, ask tough questions, evaluate the answers received, and to act in an effective and ethical manner regardless of situational characteristics.
This textbook teaches management principles to tomorrow’s business leaders by weaving three threads through every chapter: strategy, entrepreneurship and active leadership.
This book's modular format easily maps to a POLC course organization (Planning, Organizing, Leading, and Controlling, attributed to Henri Fayol (1949, General and industrial management. London. Pitman Publishing company), and suits the needs of most undergraduate or graduate course in Principles of Management.
Principles of Marketing by Tanner, Raymond and Schuster teaches the experience and process of actually doing marketing - not just the vocabulary. It carries five dominant themes throughout in order to expose students to marketing in today's environment: Service dominant logic, sustainability, ethics and social responsibility, global coverage, and metrics.
In a world that is becoming more virtual, more global, and more complex, the project manager's ability to function in this environment becomes critical to the success of the project. Project Management from Simple to Complex explores project management within this complex, virtual, and global environment.
This is not a standard textbook that was adapted to the new publishing paradigm but was designed from the beginning to utilize its capabilities. The book is written in collaboration by an expert in Project Management—Russell Darnall—and an expert in writing instructional texts and using technology for communicating online—John Preston—to create a unique learning environment that prepares students to manage projects in a global, multicultural, and online environment.
Project Management from Simple to Complex features a new model for managing projects, as well as, exploration into the personal dynamics of project management and the role those dynamics play in project outcomes.
Social Problems: Continuity and Change by Steve Barkan is a realistic but motivating look at the many issues that are facing our society today. As this book’s subtitle, Continuity and Change, implies, social problems are persistent, but they have also improved in the past and can be improved in the present and future, provided that our nation has the wisdom and will to address them.
It is easy for students to read a social problems textbook and come away feeling frustrated by the enormity of the many social problems facing us today. Social Problems: Continuity and Change certainly does not minimize the persistence of social problems, but neither does it overlook the possibilities for change offered by social research and by the activities of everyday citizens working to make a difference. Readers of Steve Barkan’s book will find many examples of how social problems have been improved and of strategies that hold great potential for solving them today and in the future.
You will find several pedagogical features help to convey the “continuity and change” theme of this text and the service sociology vision in which it is grounded: Each chapter begins with a “Social Problems in the News” story related to the social problem discussed in that chapter. These stories provide an interesting starting point for the chapter’s discussion and show its relevance for real-life issues. Three types of boxes in each chapter provide examples of how social problems have been changed and can be changed.
The founders of sociology in the United States wanted to make a difference. A central aim of the sociologists of the Chicago school was to use sociological knowledge to achieve social reform. A related aim of sociologists like Jane Addams, W.E.B. DuBois, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett and others since was to use sociological knowledge to understand and alleviate gender, racial, and class inequality.
Steve Barkan’s Sociology: Understanding and Changing the Social World makes sociology relevant for today’s students by balancing traditional coverage with a fresh approach that takes them back to sociology’s American roots in the use of sociological knowledge for social reform.
From audience analysis to giving a presentation, Stand up, Speak out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking will guide students through the speech making process. The authors focus on the process of speech making because they have created this book to be a user-friendly guide to creating, researching, and presenting public speeches. While both classic and current academic research in public speaking guide this book, the authors believe that a new textbook in public speaking should first, and foremost, be a practical book that helps students prepare and deliver a variety of different types of speeches — and that is the primary goal of this book.With practicality in mind, the authors developed, Stand up, Speak out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking, as a streamlined public speaking textbook. Many public speaking textbooks today contain over twenty different chapters, which is often impossible to cover in a ten-week quarter or a sixteen-week semester; this textbook is eighteen unique chapters. The fifteen chapters are divided into four clear units of information: introduction to public speaking, speech preparation, speech creation, and speech presentation.
Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication was written to squarely emphasize media technology. Jack believes that an introduction to mass communication text should be a compelling, historical narrative sketching the *ongoing evolution* of media technology and how that technology shapes and is shaped by culture — and that is what he set out to deliver with his new textbook.
Today’s students are immersed in media technology. They live in a world of cell phones, smart phones, video games, iPods, laptops, Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, and more. They fully expect that new technology will be developed tomorrow. Yet students often lack an historical perspective on media technology. They lack knowledge of the social, political and economic forces that shape media technology. This is not knowledge for knowledge’s sake. It is knowledge that can help them understand, comprehend, appreciate, anticipate, shape and control media technology.
With this focus, Understanding Media and Culture becomes an appropriate title. Indeed, the title has particular significance. Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media is a key text in media studies. Written in the 1960s, Understanding Media was the subject of intense debates that continue to this day. Its central message was that the technology of media — not their content — was their most important feature. In a typically pithy phrase, McLuhan said, ”The medium is the message.“ The title, Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication, situates the introductory text in a large, engrossing theoretical conversation.
The goal is to adopt a textbook that will support and complement your teaching of this course. Jack Lule’s, Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication, will support an engaging and interesting course experience for students that will not only show them the powerful social, political and economic forces will affect the future of media technology, but will challenge students to do their part in shaping that future.
The discipline of geography bridges the social sciences with the physical sciences and can provide a
framework for understanding our world. By studying geography, we can begin to understand the
relationships and common factors that tie our human community together. The world is undergoing
globalization on a massive scale as a result of the rapid transfer of information and technology and
the growth of modes of transportation and communication. The more we understand our world, the
better prepared we will be to address the issues that confront our future. There are many approaches
to studying world geography. This textbook takes a regional approach and focuses on themes that
illustrate the globalization process, which in turn assists us in better understanding our global
community and its current affairs.
This a text that provides instruction in steps, builds writing, reading, and critical thinking, and combines comprehensive grammar review with an introduction to paragraph writing and composition.


During the final twenty years of the nineteenth century, the Arab Renaissance, al-Nahda, took off throughout the Middle East. It began several decades after a clash with the Western hemisphere via Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798, and it resulted in the modernization of Arabic religions, language, and, most famously, literature and poetry. Within this literary revival, a group of poets known as the Mahjar Poets provided the Arab World with a new array of poetic topics from the West. Moving away from religious and narrative subjects, the Mahjar Poets homed in on themes of globalism and Western influence throughout the Arab World by adopting classical poetic form. They later adopted nineteenth century American free verse forms during a period of mass immigration to America. During the same period, the American Fireside Poets, consisting of Henry Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, John Whittier, James Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, became the most widely studied and popular poets of nineteenth century America. Due to the increase in immigration from the Middle East to America, along with the early stages of al-Nahda influence, the later works of the Fireside Poets and the early works of the Mahjar Poets use similar themes and poetic forms to frame their cross-cultural critiques. This time period was not so much a westernization of Arab poetry (as some critics have claimed) as it was a collision of worldviews and sharing of values between the Middle Eastern and Western spheres. Today this poetic interaction provides modern readers with a unique view of American society through the lens of Arab poetry and the orientalist response thereto.
Al-Nahda (النهضة) is the Arabic term for “the awakening” or “the renaissance,” and this era of Middle Eastern history began at roughly the same time in the cities of Cairo and Beirut, capitals of Egypt and Lebanon. Several key players include Egyptian philosopher Gamal al-Din al-Afghani, Egyptian jurist Muhammad Abduh, and Lebanese novelist Jurji Zaydan. In all three of their fields, they treated al-Nahda as a project to modernize the Arab World, promoting rationalist, secularist, urban, and individualist thought throughout most of the region in the late 1800’s. Meanwhile, the increased work opportunities and industrialism in America drew Arabs from places such as Egypt and the Levant (including Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria). This emigration facilitated the spread of al-Nahda’s ideas and gave rise to one of the most prolific groups of poets, the Mahjars. The Mahjar Poets were those poets who embraced the Arab renaissance most fully by providing nineteenth century Arab poetry with modernist and western themes (Di-Capua).
These new wave poets, however, did not begin writing in America. Rather, they represent a literary and poetic revolution that began throughout the Arab World before moving westward (and before adopting the name Mahjar). Thus, the Mahjar movement was not just an Americanization of Arab poets—it was the acknowledgement of similar poetic roots shared by the Middle East and the Americas. As Lisa Suhair Majaj suggests in her article “Arab-American Literature: Origins and Developments,” the Mahjar Poets “emphasized those aspects of their identities likely to gain acceptance by white Americans, and distanced themselves from those elements of Arab culture viewed as less readily assimilable.” However, these poets were not attempting to completely merge Eastern and Western cultures; rather, they aimed to use nineteenth century American poetry conventions to voice their celebration and concerns about globalization, a concept common to those in America and the Arab World.
Abdulrazzak Patel’s article “Nahḍah Oratory: Western Rhetoric in al-Shartūnī's Manual on the Art of the Orator” focuses on absorptions of Western rhetoric in al-Nahda literature long before its American contact. In this case study, Patel discusses the linguist, literary figure, and teacher Sa‘id al-Shartun who studied nineteenth century Western rhetoric. After finding that not much ancient Islamic rhetorical criticism was available to study, he concentrated on ancient Greek criticism instead. He noticed that many of its principles were applicable to nineteenth century Arab oration techniques. This finding implies that nineteenth century Arab rhetoric, prior to mass Arab emigration to America, was already adopting western writing techniques. Before the late nineteenth century, Arab poets and “orators focused mainly on rhyme and figures of speech”; however, the advent of al-Nahda “brought important changes to Arab rhetoric” including “secularism and modernization of Arab society”—changes that predated major cultural exchange with the United States (Patel 239).
Patel’s presentation on Al-Shartun’s findings show that classical western rhetoric and style influenced al-Nahda writers before America did specifically. Only upon immigrating to the Americas did al-Nahda writers become the Mahjar Poets. Mahjar (مهجر) is the Arabic word for “displaced” and is therefore a misnomer because these people willingly left their countries for better job opportunities and to escape the Ottoman Empire. In fact, the Mahjar Poets were “predominantly Christians who migrated to America due to socio-political and economic unrest that prevailed” in Egypt and the Levant (Talukdar 22). Once in the United States, the Mahjar Poets began to adopt new poetic forms and themes: while earlier forms of Arabic poetry consisted of baroque language, late nineteenth century Mahjar poetry centers on “clarity of style… and language” by a distinct narrator (Patel 252). Patel’s observation about clarity accords with scholar Mizazur Talukdar’s point that the Mahjar Poets “wanted to make Arabic literature more people friendly, fascinating, and easily understandable” in America (Talukdar 22). In his article “Arabic Migration Literature of America,” Talukdar discusses the influx of Lebanese immigrants to America during the late 1800’s. Marked by a blend of Eastern and Western poetry, Mahjar poetry focused on free verse and political discourse to gain momentum in this new land. As its school became prominent throughout North America, “Western ideas got prominence over the traditional values,” and so this Mahjar poetry came to more closely resemble poetry by European-Americans. Talukdar even believes that it added to literary modernism beginning in twentieth century America (22).
As “a hybrid of both English and Arabic literatures,” Mahjar poetry utilizes American form and poetic style as a platform to voice Arab concerns about the Ottoman Empires; it also shares themes of globalism with nineteenth century American poetry (22). Furthermore, Mahjar poetry helped share Middle Eastern cultures via poetry published in America—Arab poetry being the oldest form of art and religious language in the Arab World. While traditional Arab poetry consists of steady, metric measurement, the Mahjar Poets began implementing nineteenth century American free verse in order to bring the two regions together poetically. Eventually, Mahjar poetry became known in America for its “adoption of modern literary styles” (22). In other words, Mahjar poetry is unique—both among nineteenth century American poetry and poetry of the Arab World—in that it has traces of some Western poetic devices such as uneven rhyme schemes, free verse, and voice (narration separate from authorship).
As Talukdar mentions, the Mahjar Poets took advantage of this new poetic platform to voice disdain for the Ottoman Empire and advocate for social integration between Arab immigrants and European Americans in the United States. Nineteenth-century Lebanese-American poet Ameen Rihani exemplifies this push for globalism in his works of Mahjar poetry. In his article "The Rise of Arab-American Literature: Orientalism and Cultural Translation in the Work of Ameen Rihani,” Waïl Hassan focuses on the works of Rihani, the first published Majhar Poet. From the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, he published collections of poetry, novels, speeches, and literary criticism across America. Through his work, Rihani called for “reinterpreting the ‘East’ and the ‘West’ to each other and bringing about a civilizational synthesis, coupled with a tireless pursuit of Arab independence” (Hassan 246). In much of his poetry, Rihani represents the thematic interests of the Mahjar Poets. These themes include an outward distaste for Ottoman rule, the need for social integration between Arab and European Americans, and the idea that God is a constant throughout Christianity and Islam.
Rihani’s subjectivity and globalist mindset were a departure from traditional Arabic poetry and offered a foothold for nineteenth century American readers. Upon immigrating he believed that “because of its historical experience as a former colony and the ideas expressed in its Declaration of Independence, the US would be a natural ally in the Arab struggle for national liberation” (248). Rihani represents the political, modern, and cosmopolitan nexus of late 1800’s Mahjar and American poetry. For example, his poem “I am the East,” though a translation from Arabic, uses free verse and narratorial subjectivity to comment on the Ottoman Empire’s push for modern warfare. It reads:
I am the East,
I am the corner stone
Of the first temple of God
And the first throne of Humanity…
I am the East,
I possess philosophies and creeds
So who would exchange them with me for technology
At first Rihani’s narrator appears to separate the East from the West, praising his homeland as housing the “first temple of God” and “first throne of Humanity;” however, the tone of the poem holds a certain complacency due to the monotony created by enjambment and a general lack of punctuation (lines 2, 3). Together, these two elements make the reading of “I am the East” unexcited and distant. “I am the East” recognizes the Eastern-Western convergence during the latter years of Ottoman rule. In exchanging Eastern “philosophies and creeds” for “technology,” the speaker comments on the adoption of European warfare by the Ottoman army in preparation for the First World War (lines 6, 7). According to Ottoman science and technology scholar Zakaria Virk, “From 15th century onward the Ottomans adopted European technologies especially those that related to firearms, cartography and mining” (Virk). Perhaps Rihani’s speaker feels that this method of connecting the Arab and Western worlds is unnatural, yielding a stunned tone. Regardless, the poem remarks on globalism and recognizes the growing connection between the Levant and America.
Rihani’s poetry also sheds a more positive light on the blending of Middle Eastern and American cultures. For example, his poem “Light” addresses the differences between people and how they can reconcile these differences through the observance of nature. It reads,
Light! Light! let it shine in our hearts, however dark the world may be.
let it flow from our hearts, however somber the horizons may be.
though I have only a hut in the valley, lit in the night by a meager candle.
my eye reflects in the hut all the light it beholds in the world.
and should the storm blow and uproot my hut as it uproots the trees,
carrying it to the river's mouth,
there is a cave there among the rocks impregnable to the storm and there
is the light of the sun and the stars
and should the heavens darken and the planets and the stars be eclipsed,
still in this human heart is light eternal.
Let the light shine in our hearts, however somber the horizons may be
In lines 3 and 4 particularly, the narrator recognizes himself as a person apart from others (as living in a “hut in the valley”). Yet somehow he possesses something common to all of mankind around the world: light. The narrator claims that “the human heart is light eternal” to make a point that no matter where one’s roots are, globalization is an opportunity to harmonize communities—even in the most unfamiliar lands (such as a “cave among the rocks impregnable to the storm”) (lines 10, 7).
While “Light” offers a positive perspective on cultural contact, Rihani’s role as an Arab-American poet renders his own culture vulnerable to orientalist views. A term coined by post-colonial studies founder Edward Said, orientalism “is a way of seeing that imagines, emphasizes, exaggerates and distorts differences of Arab peoples and cultures as compared to that of Europe and the U.S. It often involves seeing Arab culture as exotic, backward, uncivilized, and at times dangerous” (“What Is Orientalism?”). As the first published Arab-American poet, Rihani’s default role in late nineteenth century America was to represent the entire Middle East through his work. His poetry therefore runs the risk of cultural reductionism. In other words, condensing the entire history and culture of the Middle East into a poem or group of poems is not possible because 1) the history and culture is too vast and varies depending on location, and 2) Rihani is not from the entire Middle East; he is from Lebanon. When writing in Arabic, for an Arabic audience, he “enjoyed greater discursive latitude in that… [he was] not expected to… pose as [an] Oriental spokesman” (Hassan 249). However, due to his new American environment, he and many other Mahjar Poets most likely felt burdened by having to appeal to a Western audience while still creating innovative, provocative work.
Only in the early twentieth century did Rihani’s poems begin to address the clash of Middle Eastern and American cultures head on. His 1921 work “A Chant of Mystics” rehashes a theme similar to that of “Light” by claiming that “we are not of the East of the West; / No boundaries exist in our breast: / We are free” (254 lines 8-10). For the majority of his multicultural career, however, Rihani had to “couch [his] messages in ways that guaranteed, or at least increased, the likelihood of [his poetry’s] acceptance,” echoing the pressures many Majhar Poets faced while writing in America (249). Katherine Wardi-Zonna and Anissa J. Wardi, authors of "In Passing: Arab American Poetry and the Politics of Race," points out that upon the immigration of Arabs in the late nineteenth century many Americans developed orientalist perceptions. Aware of these associations, Arab-Americans would try to racially pass, a social technique in which one suppresses his or her native culture around others outside of it for the purpose of fitting in. Still, Arab cultures would manifest themselves in the popular form of nineteenth century poetry, though, like Rihani, many Arab poets could not fully express or address cultural contact for fear of discrimination or lack of success.
The early stages of this cross-cultural contact posed a dilemma for Arab immigrants:
In fact, “English and French literature in general and that of Long Fellow [sic], Walt Whitman and Edgar Alan [sic] in particular greatly influenced the literary activities of Mahjar writers… [who were] equally influenced by the earlier modern Arabic literary schools” (Talukdar 22). Essentially, the Mahjar Poets were a blend of classical Arabic and nineteenth century European and American influence. Much of this latter influence stemmed from a group known as the Fireside Poets, which included Henry Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, John Whittier, James Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. As Talukdar notes, Mahjar poetry contains strains of Fireside themes and forms. Both groups of poets focus on globalism as a predominant topic; however, while the Majhars take a more positive look at how the Middle East and America have come in contact, the Fireside Poets neither praise nor critique it. Instead, the Fireside Poets provide a more skeptical perspective on cross-cultural contact. Nevertheless, Mahjar writing affected Fireside poetry in a way that shifted the predominant nineteenth century American themes.
Mahjar poetry entered the American scene in the late nineteenth century when American poetry was undergoing major changes, including adopting unique globalist views. Critics have generally attributed these changes to the cataclysm of the Civil War. But in their article “Against 1865: Reperiodizing the Nineteenth Century,” Christopher Hager and Cody Marrs contend that the antebellum-postbellum way of looking at nineteenth century American poetry does not accurately reflect the way poetry changed during that time period. Instead, they see this period as one in which many popular poets challenged realism, which exaggerates commonplace situations one finds in the real world. It also centers on mundane daily life within nineteenth century American society in order to emphasize inconsistencies and divergence. Among the Fireside Poets Whittier, along with avant garde poet Walt Whitman, was categorized during the antebellum-postbellum period as a realist writer; however, he and Whitman were not just realists. They were much more.
When describing shifts in poetic themes throughout the late nineteenth century, critics overlook the possibility of Arab influence—they focus on the Civil War as the primary influence instead. But much of Whittier’s subjective, free verse writing outsold the realist collections, and Whitman’s poetry carved the way for the sub-genre known as “mysticism.” This new sub-genre of realist poetry focused on the ambiguous origins of American realism and subjectivity in the context of globalism. For example, Whitman’s 1888 poem “Orange Buds by Mail from Florida” reads:
A lesser proof than old Voltaire's, yet greater,
Proof of this present time, and thee, thy broad
To my plain Northern hut, in outside clouds
Brought safely for a thousand miles o'er land
Some three days since on their own soil live
Now here their sweetness through my room un-
A bunch of orange buds by mail from Florida.
Whitman takes the voice of a presumably Western-hemisphere northerner (perhaps from Scandinavia or the British Isles) to subtly comment that America’s “broad / expanse” involves the contact it has with other cultures (lines 2-3). To recognize that the orange buds are from the American state of Florida is to recognize the globalization of America in the late 1800’s, and not simply the trade patterns resulting from American discord. As Hager and Marrs mention, this poem “discovers the simple act of receiving mail a sublime proof of American ‘progress,’” if, in fact, progress involves the acceptance of a globalized nineteenth century society (269). Further, the American Civil War is not a sufficient lens through which to read “Orange Buds” because although it is categorically a “postbellum” piece, it does not serve as commentary on the war itself. Instead, cross-cultural influences are at work. According to Hager and Marrs, “if such a recategorization of Whitman seems a bit odd, that is not only because such writers have been placed in fixed epochal categories like ‘antebellum’ and ‘postbellum’ but also because the difference between those categories is frequently grasped generically” (270). In other words, Whitman’s new self-created category of “mysticism” was not a rogue genre of poetry, nor was it simply a result of the Civil War; other poetic influences were at work. Likely, these were the Mahjar Poets.
As for these American poets, however, they did not return any interest in classical Arabic poetry. Instead, they were curious about this new, other culture. While both groups of poets shared an awareness of cross-cultural contact, the Fireside Poets recorded the reception of the first Arab-American immigrants. John Greenleaf Whittier’s 1858 poem “The Palm-Tree” is one of the earliest works to discuss the influx of Arabs to America. Though reductionist, it does not hold any contention; rather, it packages the Middle Eastern immigrants with exoticism, simplicity, and earthiness. Whittier, being an abolitionist and political activist, typically used “verse to advance the cause of emancipation,” among other socially impactful movements (Bercovitch 139). Readers can therefore assume that no harm is meant by this condensed representation of the immigrants. He simply charges himself with commenting on this social phenomenon. For example, an excerpt of “The Palm-Tree” reads:
Who smokes his nargileh, cool and calm?
The master, whose cunning and skill could charm
Cargo and ship from the bounteous palm.
In the cabin he sits on a palm-mat soft,
From a beaker of palm his drink is quaffed,
And a palm-thatch shields from the sun aloft!
His dress is woven of palmy strands,
And he holds a palm-leaf scroll in his hands,
Traced with the Prophet's wise commands!
Whittier’s tone is exploratory and descriptive, not accusatory or contentious. However, words such as “cunning,” “charm,” and “commands” help paint a vivid image—one that categorizes Arabs as perhaps manipulative and harsh (lines 2,9). Though the narrator does not seem fearful of this Eastern man, an element of skepticism still persists throughout the poem. The narrator separates the subject of the poem from his own American point of view, creating a sense of otherness around the man.
Similarly, Whittier’s poem “The Haschish” (1854) is the first poem to ever reference foreign drug use in America. Since the concept of hashish (الحشيش) was novel to Whittier and his contemporaries, he put himself in charge of making his readers aware of Arab influence. An excerpt of it reads:
The Arab by his desert well
Sits choosing from some Caliph’s daughters,
And hears his single camel’s bell
Sound welcome to his regal quarters.
The Koran’s reader makes complaint
Of Shitan dancing on and off it;
The robber offers alms, the saint
Drinks Tokay and blasphemes the Prophet
Such scenes that Eastern plant awakes;
But we have one ordained to beat it,
The Haschish of the West, it makes
Or fools or knaves of all who eat it.
The narrator goes on to say that the Middle Eastern hashish pales in comparison to the Western plant cotton. Throughout “The Haschish,” the narrator alludes to many stereotypes of the Arab world including deserts, camels, dancing, and robbers, thus perpetuating orientalist views of Arab immigrants. However, at the time the concept of orientalism was not yet named. While Whitman calls attention to the larger implications of Eastern-Western contact, Whittier, as a Fireside Poet, focuses reader attention more on understanding the cultural impact of this contact on a smaller, more personal scale. The Mahjars did not reciprocate this focus; rather, as my analysis of Rihani has shown, they concentrated on the larger, positive effects of immigration and cultural clash. As for the Fireside Poets, their reception of Arab culture, as expressed through their poetry, is ambiguous. The lack of praise or disdain for immigration and cultural contact leaves readers wondering whether they actually find it to be a positive experience. As “The Haschish” depicts, Whittier finds a way to directly compare America to the entire Middle East in a competitive and skeptical way—much as a cat will try and decipher whatever new animal it comes into contact with before deciding on whether or not it is actually a threat.
For both European-American settlers and Arab-American immigrants, the late nineteenth century proved to be a time of intense social changes in the new country. Though these changes were felt throughout the population, poetry during this time period captured most accurately the varying points of view on the mingling of Western and Middle Eastern cultures. On one hand, the Mahjar Poets, including the famous Ameen Rihani, took to social passing in order to praise cross-cultural interaction. Americans, on the other hand, were perhaps more skeptical of the influx of immigrants. The Fireside Poets, in particular, charged themselves with voicing popular concerns about the recognition of these primarily Levantine immigrants. Both groups’ poetry presents an awareness of late 1800’s cultural contact; however, while the Mahjars depicted this contact as an opportunity to highlight the commonalities between the two hemispheres, the Fireside Poets wrote on the defensive, painting these Arab immigrants in simplistic, reductionist, and alien colors. Even so, the late nineteenth century American backdrop has traces of cosmopolitan ideals, brought from the Middle East and inevitably echoed by the West. Streaks of al-Nahda’s influence will forever be etched into the canon of American poetry.
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