Story of Civilization

Phillip Campbell

Description

Children should not just read about history, they should live it. In The Story of Civilization, the stories that have shaped humanity come alive like never before. Author Phillip Campbell uses his historical expertise and story-telling ability together in tandem to present the content in a fresh and thrilling way. The Story of Civilization reflects a new emphasis in presenting the history of the world as a thrilling and compelling narrative. Within each chapter, children will encounter short stories that place them directly in the shoes of historical figures, both famous and ordinary, as they live through legendary battles and invasions, philosophical debates, the construction of architectural wonders, the discovery of new inventions and sciences, and the exploration of the world. Volume IV: The History of the United States transfers the journey over to the New World. Beginning with Columbus when he sailed the open blue and extending into the present day, this volume tells the thrilling tale of our nation, both the good and the bad. Children will be introduced to heroic American saints like Juan Diego, Peter Claver, and Elizabeth Ann Seton, explorers like Lewis and Clark and Neil Armstrong, and a whole host of US presidents, as well as relive some of the most significant events in our country's past, like the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the assassination of President Lincoln, the Civil Rights Movement, the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, and many more. The strength of the content lies not only in the storybook delivery but also in the way it presents history through the faithful prism of the Church. Have you always wanted your children to learn about world history from a Catholic perspective? Here, you'll have the trusted resource you've always wanted.

Sujets

• Open learning
• History of education
• Homeschooling
• Education

Informations

• Publié par: TAN Books
• Date de parution: 06 novembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781505111538
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION
VOLUME IV: THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES
THE STORY OF
CIVILIZATION
VOLUME IV:
THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES
ONE NATION UNDER GOD
Phillip Campbell
TAN
The Story of Civilization: Volume IV, The History of the United States © 2019 Phillip Campbell.
All rights reserved. With the exception of short excerpts used in critical reviews, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in any form whatsoever, printed or electronic, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Cover and illustrations by Chris Pelicano
ISBN: 978-1-5051-1147-7
Published in the United States by
TAN Books
P.O. Box 410487
Charlotte, NC 28241
www.TANBooks.com
Printed and bound in the United States of America
CONTENTS
Foreword: A Note to Parents
Introduction: A Tour of History
Chapter 1: The Conquest of Mexico
Chapter 2: Our Spanish Heritage
Chapter 3: The Arrival of the French
Chapter 4: New France and the Jesuit Martyrs
Chapter 5: The Founding of Jamestown
Chapter 6: The Pilgrims Come to Plymouth
Chapter 7: Life in the English Colonies
Chapter 8: The French and Indian War
Chapter 9: Trouble With Parliament
Chapter 10: The American War of Independence
Chapter 11: Founding the Republic
Chapter 12: The Federalist Era
Chapter 13: The Age of Jefferson
Chapter 14: The War of 1812
Chapter 15: The Era of Good Feelings
Chapter 16: Changes in American Society
Chapter 17: Andrew Jackson
Chapter 18: Texas and the Mexican War
Chapter 19: Opening the West
Chapter 20: The Problem of Slavery
Chapter 21: The Civil War
Chapter 22: Reconstruction
Chapter 23: The Gilded Age
Chapter 24: The Indian Wars
Chapter 25: American Imperialism
Chapter 26: The Progressive Era
Chapter 27: The United States in World War I
Chapter 28: Roaring Twenties
Chapter 29: The Great Depression
Chapter 30: The Arsenal of Democracy
Chapter 31: The Cold War and the American Dream
Chapter 32: The Civil Rights Era
Chapter 33: War and Discontent
Chapter 34: Morning in America
Chapter 35: The Nineties
Chapter 36: The United States in the New Millennium
Index
FOREWORD
A Note to Parents
There can be no doubt that the central claims of the Christian faith are deeply intertwined with historical events—a Christian ignorant of history is a Christian without any sense of his own identity. Nevertheless, ignorance of our past has never been more widespread among educated westerners than it is today; despite the technological marvels of modernity, the post-Christian West has lost its memory and thus stands in danger of losing its very soul.
As with all educational problems, this crisis has its foundations in childhood education, which has moved resolutely over the past three decades away from teaching “history” in the traditional sense, substituting the social sciences and mere cultural exposure in history’s place. In many school curricula for children, the only appearance “history” makes is as a form of trivia—arbitrary facts about far-away times and places that are unlikely to make a radical impact on the young student’s understanding of the world and his place in it. Catholic children are left without a robust sense of identity as Catholics; instead, the media and prevailing culture fill the vacuum, providing students with, at best, a poor understanding of their Church’s history and of the civilizations and societies shaped by Catholic culture.
Thus there is a tremendous responsibility imposed on the Catholic parents and educators of today. I would even argue that they are tasked with providing historical training as surely as they are tasked with providing moral and religious formation. Without the former, the latter will always rest on an imperfect foundation, for a young person without a proper historical education is liable to be swept away when confronted with false or tendentious narratives or with slanders against the history of the Church.
False historical narratives are not far to seek; in fact, many of them are embedded in the fabric of our culture, saturating our minds with prejudices and preconceptions that are hostile to our Church and its traditions and hostile to historical fact. The prevalence of anti-Catholic historical narratives is especially marked in the English-speaking world, where the legacy of Reformation-era propaganda and confessional history is enduringly anti-Catholic. The crude slanders of John Foxe in his sixteenth-century Book of Martyrs gave way, over the centuries, to the more sophisticated (and more decidedly anti-Christian) rationalism of Edward Gibbon in the eighteenth century and to the casual, socially respectable anti-Catholicism of Henry Charles Lea in the nineteenth. English-language historiography is thus leavened with anti-Catholicism in a way that has unavoidably influenced English-speaking Catholics. One can detect the echoes of this tradition even today, as many otherwise fine school textbooks retain an anti-Catholic tone, even to the point of including myths that have been long since debunked by professional historical scholarship.
Outside the English-speaking world, moreover, the aggressive secularism of our time has taken a similar toll, even in countries that were devoutly Catholic in their former days. Famously, the 2004 proposed constitution for the European Union neglected to mention Christianity at all, even among the historically shared values of Europeans. Thus we live in a time of great need; parents and educators have to be able to turn somewhere for materials to educate their children on the history of the Western world.
Into this gaping breach steps TAN Books, which for decades has been fighting a lonely and increasingly desperate battle against the misinformation about the Church that dominates the press and the airwaves. Over the years, TAN has sought to publish both new works and reprinted classics on Catholic devotional life, dogma, liturgy, theology, and history. Now TAN has accepted a new challenge in response to the needs of the time: providing the materials that homeschooling parents desperately need. I can personally attest to the timeliness of TAN’s new mission; as a homeschooling father, I know how hard it can be to find materials that are trustworthy, intellectually stimulating, and engaging for children. Phillip Campbell’s The Story of Civilization series is all of the above and more. Both he and TAN deserve enormous praise for bringing this project to fruition. More so than any other academic field, history has had an unfulfilled need for materials of this kind for many, many years.
Here in Volume IV , Phillip Campbell offers an insightful and nuanced look at the place of the New World in modernity and at the emergence of the United States as the preeminent global power. The exploration and colonization of the New World by European kingdoms utterly transformed human history. The Spanish and Portuguese conquest of Mexico, Central America, and South America, along with the English, Dutch, and French colonization of North America, led to the creation of new civilizations and new technologies, as well as new political experiments in pluralism and democracy. On the other hand, the settlement of the New World by Europeans also involved new experiments in slavery and human trafficking, and in the exploitation and extermination of many of the New World’s indigenous inhabitants. Volume IV presents a sympathetic and Catholic viewpoint on these developments, with due attention to the complexity of history and the variety of characters one encounters there.
The emergence of American preeminence, and the place of Catholics in American history, are crucial subjects for the formation and education of young American Catholics today. The Story of Civilization: Volume IV thus performs a wonderful service for homeschooling families by providing a balanced account of recent history that will hopefully inspire young Catholics to become lifelong students of the past and lifelong contributors to our society’s future.
Brendan J. McGuire, PhD Associate Professor of History, Christendom College
INTRODUCTION
A Tour of History
In the past three volumes of this series, you have taken a journey through the history of Western civilization. We have come a long way since reading about the early nomads, but as you’ll soon see, we still have a long way more to go. Believe it or not, by the time you finish this book, you’ll have taken this journey through history all the way from ancient Egypt through Greece and Rome to medieval Europe and then across the ocean to the continent of North America. But before we get to what you’ll discover in this volume of The Story of Civilization , let’s review what you’ve learned so far.
As we just mentioned, it all began with the early nomads who roamed about the earth seeking food and shelter wherever they could find it. This way of life was difficult, but there’s something adventurous about the wandering life of a nomad, don’t you think?
Of course, people eventually began to settle down. With the discovery of farming, people saw that they could grow their food from the earth in one place rather than traveling around all the time. So they settled down together and created civilizations where they could live and raise families.
Some of the earliest civilizations included the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, and others. We spoke about the way of life, culture, religious beliefs, and political systems of all these, and chronicled the many wars that rose up among these cultures. Let us also not forget the story of the Israelites, which makes up so much of the Old Testament; we also came to know great figures like Abraham, Moses, and King David.
One of the ancient empires we talked about the most was centered in Rome. The Roman Empire was the dominating force in the world for hundreds of years. But that all changed when Jesus