Long positioned and respected as a bestseller for the market segment that focuses on political history as its framework, this textbook's most significant strength is its rich and distinctive prose. For this Tenth Edition, Garraty selected a distinguished co-author, Mark Carnes of Barnard College at Columbia University, to join him in revising The American Nation. The two have collaborated on and co-edited the prestigious American National Biography Series by Oxford, as well as Mapping America's Past, a well-known trade atlas for Henry Holt.

Throughout the new Tenth Edition, the authors updated the scholarship, integrated more social and cultural history, revised the final chapters, and added a new chapter (33) to better address issues of the 1990s that culminated in the Clinton impeachment scandal.