The American Tapestry is a digital text that pulls in videos, text links, and primary sources while asking you to engage with these materials through online polls, surveys and reflection assignments. The goal is for you to not just read but to think about what you read.  

The text is organized into four sections, each covering a chronological chunk of time in American history. Within each section, the chapters look at this period from a thematic perspective. Each chapter opens with a vignette that introduces you to an individual, sometimes an event, that helps you understand both the theme of the chapter and the issues involved. This vignette is then followed by a brief discussion of the chapter theme, offering you a theoretical and larger historical context to the issue. The chapter text focuses on telling you a story, not just listing dates and people and legislation for you to memorize.  If you are interested in learning more about individuals and particular laws and events, you can follow the links to websites outside the text. These links will help you better contextualize the material. The text is interspersed with videos and additional materials that have reflective questions and other exercises linked to them. The goal is to have you think about what you read and reflect on the meaning of the materials. These exercises, in an online class, are your class attendance. 

At the end of each chapter you will find a link to a more recent article that links what you have learned to contemporary debates defined by this past. There are also a few questions for you to think about as you read the article. The purpose of this segment is to help you make connections between the past and the present, to understand how our experiences today are still defined by our history. This segment serves as the basis for classroom discussions. Finally, each chapter has a quiz associated with it. These quizzes are meant to test your understanding of the material—not you memorizing events and names and people. They are designed in a way that requires you again think about what you read.

Welcome to American Tapestry: The Story of US. My hope is to present you the story of this nation as one made up of diverse threads that together makes “us” and the United States (US) what we are today.