Present Tense

Present Tense: The United States Since 1945
by Michael Schaller, Virginia Scharff, and Robert D. Schulzinger

Respected for its coverage of foreign policy and domestic politics, Present Tense also provides a thorough examination of social and cultural history. This edition includes a greater focus on the 1970s and 1980s, and increased coverage of recent immigration.

Michael Schaller is professor of history at the University of Arizona. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1974. Schaller specializes in American foreign relations, U.S.-East Asian relations, and 20th-century U.S. history. His publications cover such topics as World War II in China, the occupation of Japan, the life of General Douglas MacArthur, and the presidency of Ronald Reagan. He regularly teaches courses on the U.S. since World War II, American relations with Asia, the Vietnam War, and American foreign relations.

Robert Schulzinger is professor of history at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He received his Ph.D from Yale University in 1971. His areas of expertise are American diplomatic and recent U.S. history. His many publications include A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam (1977), American Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century (1994), and Henry Kissinger: Doctor of Diplomacy (1993). He currently serves as the director of the International Affairs Program at the University of Colorado.

The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried
by Tim O'Brien

A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling.

The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three.

Taught everywhere—from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing—it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing.

When Broken Glass Floats

When Broken Glass Floats: Growing up under the Khmer Rouge
by Chanrithy Him

Chanrithy Him vividly recounts her trek through the hell of the "killing fields." She gives us a child's-eye view of a Cambodia where rudimentary labor camps for both adults and children are the norm and modern technology no longer exists. Death becomes a companion in the camps, along with illness. Yet through the terror, the members of Chanrithy's family remain loyal to one another, and she and her siblings who survive will find redeemed lives in America.