In the mid 1960s, C. Vann Woodward was asked to organize a program of broadcast lectures on US history for the Voice of America as part of a longer series designed to acquaint foreign audiences with leaders in American arts and sciences. Reasoning that a comparative approach "was peculiarly adapted to the interests and needs of foreign audiences," Woodward commissioned twenty-two noted scholars to cover classic topics in American history—the Civil War, the World Wars, slavery, immigration, and many others—but to add a comparative dimension by relating these topics to developments elsewhere in the world. The result was the 1968 Basic Books edition of
The Comparative Approach to American History
.
Now, three decades later, Oxford is very pleased to be reissuing this classic collection of historical essays in a paperback edition, with a new introduction by Woodward that discusses the decline and resurgence of comparative history since the 1960s.