The American Yawp Vol. I: To 1877
The narrative provides a fairly comprehensive treatment of the subject matter. As with any US history textbook, the authors/editors have made choices about the amount of focus devoted to each particular subject. On the whole, their choices make good sense.
The book lacks an index and glossary, but since students can search for particular words the absence of an index is not problematic. Likewise, a glossary might be nice, but I don’t consider its absence to be a major defect.
Each chapter is followed by a list of citations and recommendations for further reading. These are both valuable resources, and the latter could be especially useful for students tasked with writing research essays.
The text is accurate and free of errors. Likewise, the perspectives presented in the American Yawp are well within the main conventions of historical writing. There is not an obvious bias detectable in the work.
The text does well in incorporating more perspectives of the American experience than textbooks did in previous generations. The voices of women and different ethnic groups are presented with a degree of consistency. This is a text that is relevant for American students in this moment and should remain viable for quite some time.
The text features a clear and accessible style, largely free of pedantic phrasing and obscure terminology. It is written in an appropriate style for its audience—undergraduates in the early phases of their college education.
Since the text is not enhanced with tables and other features that break up the monotony of the text, this may be an issue for some students. This is not an issue of clarity, of course, but it could be an obstacle for some students.
On the whole, the text is internally consistent. The terminology and framework are fairly uniform throughout. The editors have managed to reduce any glaring incongruities between authors.
The only issue on this front is the amount of attention given to various topics does suffer from some inconsistency. For example, Bacon’s rebellion receives multiple pages of treatment—roughly 1400 words. In contrast, the Stono Rebellion, discussed in the following chapter, has a tenth of the amount of text (120 words) devoted to it. This is not the place to examine the relative importance of these two events, but this disparity does point to a lack of consistency across the work. This is part of the challenge of a textbook with numerous authors.
The organization of this textbook largely follows the structure of other textbooks in the area, such as Foner’s Give Me Liberty!. For instructors making the switch from another textbook, this is beneficial. The division of materials in lectures and activities can remain structured similarly, with minimal changes required.
As someone who is accustomed to structuring a class with the aim of working through one chapter a week (roughly), this volume’s fifteen chapters work well.
Just as with modularity, the division of the material in the American Yawp is sensible, following the standard divisions utilized in many textbooks. Moreover, the editors use subdivisions within the chapters, and those divisions are done well too.
The interface is solid for the most part, but there are places where the low resolution of the image files is problematic. Most of the images in the text are of good quality and enhance the readers’ experience. There are, however, some exceptions. For example, Las Castas (the chart of Spanish castes of society), is too small. The various categories’ labels cannot be made out.
One other issue to note is the relative dearth of maps in the book. This may be an issue of finding maps in the public domain, but the inclusion of more maps would strengthen the textbook.
Just as the text is written in a clear and accessible style, it is largely free of grammatical errors and stylistic infelicities.
Similar to the comments made on relevancy, the authors avoid being culturally offensive and do well in widening the view of focus from the predictable parties that received disproportionate attention in earlier eras.