This collection arose out of papers presented at a seminar held at the Department of History, University of Melbourne in December, 2002. The seminar’s purpose was to bring together the lecturers and post-graduate students in the department who specialise in American History, to share each person’s work, to receive feedback, and to reflect and think about common themes and directions in these works.

This collection demonstrates that writing history does not necessarily have to be an isolating or random process. Indeed at its best, history should be a sequence of stories.