A Perfect Storm and the U.S. History Survey

Two decades ago three powerful intellectual, political, and technological fronts collided, creating a perfect storm that swirled around history education generally and the U.S. history survey in particular. The explosion of the Internet in the 1990s, the political controversy over the release of the U.S. History Standards in 1994, and the impact of research on historical thinking as a goal for history education, all left historians and teachers rethinking the purpose, content, and pedagogical possibilities of the U.S. history survey. What impact have these developments had on the introductory U.S. history course over the past twenty years? What is the state of the survey course now? What have we learned and what must we consider as we design our U.S. survey course today? These questions frame the articles in this issue. Over the past twenty-five years, social history significantly revised traditional narratives of U.S. history and reshaped textbooks at the

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