This two-volume American history represents simply a restructuring (plus some new material) of an earlier three-volume study—making the study better suited as text for a two-semester college course.  

This particular volume (Volume One) begins with the period in the early 1600s when two very different English societies were established in the New World, one in Virginia and one in New England. The Virginia society simply re-created the rigidly class-based feudal society of the times. The New England society was a most unusual democracy of social equals, covenanted to live under God's—not man's—personal rule. These two American social types would find themselves in rather constant struggle...as Americans found keeping covenant with God to be very difficult because of man's natural tendency to want to control life, including the lives of others.  

This volume will take the American narrative through the rising Age of Reason of the late 1600s, the Christian "Great Awakening" of the mid-1700s, the War of Independence, the founding of a new American Republic, a Second Great Awakening, the spread west of American society, the mounting tensions over the slavery issue, a Civil War, postwar Reconstruction, the Industrial Revolution, the Age of Imperialism, World War One, the Roaring Twenties, and finally the Great Depression...with the latter's role in toughening up an American society prior to its call to new global responsibilities.  

This study goes deep in the matter not only of the dynamics of social power, but also of the cultural-spiritual character of American society and its leaders during these deeply challenging time periods and events.