America And Contemporary World History

It is a matter of great pleasure in placing the book of American history, Title, 'America and Contemporary History. History is the study of the human past. Historians study records of conditions or events of a particular time and place. The United States of America is at once a very new nation and a very old nation. The first settlers - Asian hunters and nomads - reached North America about 30,000 years ago. However, the United States of America did not come into being until 1776 with the Declaration of Independence. The history of the United States is the story of many different peoples who together compose the United States of America. Since the first Europeans arrived in 1492, millions of people from many different countries have entered the United States and made the country their new home. Because the best predictor of the future is the record of the past, we can learn much of value even when the need for such learning is not immediately apparent. Once the inevitable crisis is upon us, it may be difficult to reflect soberly on what we can learn from the past. As philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said, "Amid the pressure of great events, a general principle gives no help." A modern version of that dictum, often used in a military context, goes something like this: "It's hard to remember that your mission is to drain the swamp when you’re up to your butt in alligators." In any case, without looking backward, we may find the road ahead quite murky.