Oxford History of the United States
 Panel discussion with David M. Kennedy, James McPherson, Robert Middlekauff, and James T. Patterson, September 20, 2005, C-SPAN
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The Oxford History of the United States (1982–2016) is an ongoing multi-volume narrative history of the United States published by Oxford University Press.
The series originated in the 1950s with a plan laid out by historians C. Vann Woodward and Richard Hofstadter for a multi-volume history of the United States, one that would provide a summary of the political, social, and cultural history of the nation for a general audience. The project proved to be more challenging than initially envisioned, however. New fields of historical study emerged in the 1960s, and personal issues intervened for some of the authors. Among the historians connected with the series at one time or another were Willie Lee Rose, Morton Keller, John Lewis Gaddis, Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick. Though some of these historians completed books as a result of their respective assignments, none of them was published as part of the series.
The first volume published in the series, Robert Middlekauff's The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789, finally was released in 1982 (). Included on the rear dust jacket flap to the original hardcover edition was a projected outline for the series at that point:
McPherson's volume on the Civil War and its causes was subsequently published in 1988 as Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Two more volumes followed under Woodward's editorship. Volume 10, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974 by James T. Patterson, was published in 1997, while Volume 9, David Kennedy's Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945, was published in 1999. Sellers's contribution was published separately from the series in 1991 as The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846 (), supposedly for its excessive focus on the economics of the era, and the volume reassigned to another historian.
After Woodward's death in 1999, David Kennedy assumed the editorship of the series. Since the start of his tenure, in addition to the revised and expanded edition of Middlekauff's book, four more volumes have appeared: Volume 11, Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore by James T. Patterson, which was published in 2005 (), Volume 5, Daniel Walker Howe's What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (), which was released in 2007, Volume 12, From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776 () by George C. Herring, published in October 2008, and Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 () by Gordon S. Wood, published in September 2009. Volume 9 was also published in 2003 as two smaller volumes: The American People in the Great Depression: Freedom from Fear, Part One () and The American People in World War II: Freedom from Fear, Part Two (). Also in 2003, The Illustrated Battle Cry of Freedom was published, a new edition of James M. McPherson's book with the footnotes and a fifth of the original text removed, instead adding numerous maps and photographs with McPherson's commentary ().
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