This Teachers' Guide to Wilfred McClay's Land of Hope: An Invitation to
the Great American Story will be an invaluable aid to classroom
teachers who use Land of Hope as a textbook for courses in United
States history. McClay has coauthored the Guide with John McBride, a
master teacher with over thirty years of secondary and collegiate
teaching experience. The result is an exceptionally rich and useful
resource for the enhancement of the classroom experience. Each chapter
of Land of Hope has a five-part treatment: a short summation of the
chapter's contents, a lengthy set of questions and answers about the
text of the chapter, materials that can be deployed in testing or used
to sharpen classroom discussion; a set of short objective tests,
suitable for quizzes and exams; a primary-source document for class
study and analysis; and questions and answers to accompany the document.
In addition, there are special units to assist teachers in the giving
special coverage to the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution,
the Bill of Rights, and the Origins of the Two-Party System. Like Land
of Hope itself, these materials are designed to help students come away
from the study of the American past with a coherent sense of the larger
story, and a sense of history as a profoundly reflective activity, one
that goes to the depth of our humanity.
