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The Unfinished Nation Alan Brinkley, 2021
ISBN10: n/a    ISBN13: 9781264309306

"The title The Unfinished Nation is meant to suggest several things. It is a reminder of America's exceptional diversity--of the degree to which, despite all the many efforts to build a single, uniform definition of the meaning of American nationhood, that meaning remains contested. It is a reference to the centrality of change in American history--to the ways in which the nation has continu-ally transformed itself and continues to do so in our own time. And it is also a description of the writing of American history it-self--of the ways in which historians are engaged in a continuing, ever unfinished, process of asking new questions. Like any history, The Unfinished Nation is a product of its time and reflects the views of the past that historians of recent generations have developed. The writing of our nation's history--like our nation itself--changes constantly. It is not, of course, the past that changes. Rather, historians adjust their perspectives and priorities, ask different kinds of questions, and uncover and incorporate new historical evidence. There are now, as there have always been, critics of changes in historical understand-ing who argue that history is a collection of facts and should not be subject to "interpretation" or "revision." But historians insist that history is not simply a collection of facts. Names and dates and a record of events are only the beginning of historical under-standing. Writers and readers of history interpret the evidence before them, and inevitably bring to the task their own questions, concerns, and experiences."--Provided by publisher.