LibGuides: OER Subject Guides: History and Political Science

History and Political Science

History
Political Science

U.S. History [2014]

U.S. History is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of most introductory courses. The text provides a balanced approach to U.S. history, considering the people, events, and ideas that have shaped the United States from both the top down (politics, economics, diplomacy) and bottom up (eyewitness accounts, lived experience). Please see faculty reviews here.

textbook The American Yawp [2019]

The American Yawp is a free, online, collaboratively built American history textbook. Over 300 historians joined together to create the book they wanted for their own students—an accessible, synthetic narrative that reflects the best of recent historical scholarship and provides a jumping-off point for discussions in the U.S. history classroom and beyond. The fully peer-reviewed edition is edited by Joseph L. Locke, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Houston-Victoria, and Ben Wright, Assistant Professor of Historical Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas. Low-cost print copies are also available at the same website.

A Road Less Traveled, An Ancillary to Our Story: From Pre Contact to Post Factual America [2018]
This OER was written in collaboration with students to foster student-centered and student-driven conversations around United States history.
Western Civilization: A Concise History - Volume 1. by Christopher Brooks [2024]
Western Civilization: A Concise History is an Open Educational Resource textbook covering the history of Western Civilization from approximately 8,000 BCE to 2017 CE.
Western Civilization: A Concise History - Volume 2, by Christopher Brooks [2024]
Western Civilization: A Concise History is an Open Educational Resource textbook covering the history of Western Civilization from approximately 8,000 BCE to 2017 CE.
Western Civilization: A Concise History - Volume 3, by Christopher Brooks [2024]
Western Civilization: A Concise History is an Open Educational Resource textbook covering the history of Western Civilization from approximately 8,000 BCE to 2017 CE.

World History: Cultures, States, and Societies to 1500 [2016]

offers a comprehensive introduction to the history of humankind from prehistory to 1500. Authored by six USG faculty members with advance degrees in History, this textbook offers up-to-date original scholarship. Its digital nature allows students to follow links to applicable sources and videos, expanding their educational experience beyond the textbook.

Digital versions of this textbook are free and can be downloaded here. Low-cost print versions are available at the same website.

Contributing Editors: Eugene Berger, George L. Israel, Charlotte Miller, Brian Parkinson, Andrew Reeves, Nadejda Williams.

American Environmental History [2019]
For too long the environment has been considered little more than a neutral background to history. This text surveys findings of the new field of Environmental History about how the environment of the Americas influenced the actions of people here and how people affected their environments, from prehistory to the present.
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Dan Allosso
History of International Relations [2019, updated 2024]
Existing textbooks on international relations treat history in a cursory fashion and perpetuate a Euro-centric perspective. This textbook pioneers a new approach by historicizing the material traditionally taught in International Relations courses, and by explicitly focusing on non-European cases, debates and issues.
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Erik Ringmar, Ibn Haldun University
Keys to Understanding the Middle East [2017]
This book is intended for readers who have never studied the Middle East, or experts who may wish to fill gaps in their knowledge of the region from other disciplines. Whether for establishing or deepening one's knowledge of the region, these fundamentals are important to know. The languages, cultural, religious and sectarian communities of the region, and selected turning points and influential people in history are starting points for gaining an understanding of the diverse contexts of the region.
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Alam Payind, Ohio State University
Melinda McClimans, Ohio State University
Mythology Unbound: An Online Textbook for Classical Mythology [2017]
Mythology Unbound: An Online Textbook for Classical Mythology is written by Jessica Mellenthin and Susan O. Shapiro
UnRoman Romans
From the site: "This book is the collective work of many people. It began as a series of readings for CLST360E, UnRoman Romans, a class in the Department of Classical, Near Eastern, and Religious Studies at the University of British Columbia, and then was added to by scholarship produced by students in that class. It would not exist without help from the AMS Student Society, CTLT, UBC Library, and the Public Humanities Hub, who provided a course release for the instructor, so the project could be finished...
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This is not a comprehensive look at stigma and outgroups in Rome and the Roman Empire. We made some choices about what to focus on and to write up. During the course we also used a (highly recommended) collection of primary sources, Race and Ethnicity in the Classical World, edited by Rebecca F. Kennedy, C. Synder Roy, and Max L. Goldman (2013), which is why we did not focus on many ethnic groups and looked to add to its contents rather than replace them."

American Government [2021, Web Version Updated 2024]

American Government is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of the single-semester American government course. This title includes innovative features designed to enhance student learning, including Insider Perspective features and a Get Connected Module that shows students how they can get engaged in the political process. The book provides an important opportunity for students to learn the core concepts of American government and understand how those concepts apply to their lives and the world around them. American Government includes updated information on the 2016 presidential election.

Senior Contributing Authors

Glen Krutz (Content Lead), University of Oklahoma

Sylvie Waskiewicz, PhD (Lead Editor)

Power Point slides, test answers, and other instructor resources: https://openstax.org/details/books/american-government?Instructor%20resources

Faculty reviews: https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/american-government

Quantitative Research Methods for Political Science, Public Policy and Public Administration (With Applications in R): 3rd Edition [2017]

The focus of this book is on using quantitative research methods to test hypotheses and build theory in political science, public policy and public administration. It is designed for advanced undergraduate courses, or introductory and intermediate graduate-level courses. The first part of the book introduces the scientific method, then covers research design, measurement, descriptive statistics, probability, inference, and basic measures of association. The second part of the book covers bivariate and multiple linear regression using the ordinary least squares, the calculus and matrix algebra that are necessary for understanding bivariate and multiple linear regression, the assumptions that underlie these methods, and then provides a short introduction to generalized linear models. The book fully embraces the open access and open source philosophies. The book is freely available in the SHAREOK repository; it is written in R Markdown files that are available in a public GitHub repository; it uses and teaches R and RStudio for data analysis, visualization and data management; and it uses publicly available survey data (from the Meso-Scale Integrated Socio-geographic Network) to illustrate important concepts and methods. We encourage students to download the data, replicate the examples, and explore further! We also encourage instructors to download the R Markdown files and modify the text for use in different courses.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11244/52244

DOI

10.15763/11244/52244

book cover Global Women's Issues: Women in the World Today, extended version [2012, modified 2022]

Bureau of International Information Programs, United States Department of State

We cannot solve global challenges unless women participate fully in efforts to find solutions. Female participation in the private sector is a crucial economic driver for societies worldwide. Economic security benefits every facet of a woman’s life, with positive effects on the health, education and vitality of families. Learn about women who are changing their societies for the better. This extended version of Global Women’s Issues: Women in the World Today includes, for each chapter, a summary, key words, multiple choice questions, discussion questions, essay questions, and a list of additional resources.

Boundless Political Science:

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-politicalscience/

Instructor resources available: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-politicalscience/front-matter/accessing-instructor-resources/

Attenuated Democracy
From the site: "What is the perspective of this text? The U.S. political system suffers from endemic design flaws and is notable for the way that a small subset of Americans—whose interests often don’t align with those of the vast majority of the population—wields disproportionate power. Absent organized and persistent action on the part of ordinary Americans, the system tends to serve the already powerful. That’s why this text is called Attenuated Democracy. To attenuate something is to make it weak or thin. Democracy in America has been thin from the beginning and continues to be so despite some notable progress in voting rights. As political scientists Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens wrote, “The essence of democracy is not just having reasonably satisfactory policies; the essence of democracy is popular control of government, with each citizen having an equal voice.” (1) Since this is likely to be your only college-level course on the American political system, it is important to point out the structural weaknesses of our system and the thin nature of our democracy. Whenever you get the chance—in the voting booth, in your job, perhaps if you hold elected office—I encourage you to do something about America’s attenuated democracy."