Challenging students to get behind the facts, Making a Nation focuses on the relationships that shape and define human identity—cultural, race, gender, class and sectional relations—and recognizes the importance of such traditional fields as politics and diplomacy. The text shows that politics and the economy do not simply shape, but in turn are shaped by, the lives and cultural values of ordinary men and women. This overview synthesizes history in such a way as to allow students to see the links between the particular and the general, between large and seemingly abstract forces such as globalization and political struggle, and the daily struggles of ordinary men and women.