American Art: History and Culture is the first inclusive look at five centuries of the architecture, painting, sculpture, decorative arts, and photography created by the diverse peoples who have given direction to the arts of America.

Renowned Americanist Wayne Craven has written an engrossing, illuminating text that begins in the time before North America's encounter with Europe and Europeans in the sixteenth century and continues into its seventeenth-century colonial beginnings in the Middle Atlantic and New England regions. The story goes on for another three centuries, right through the pluralistic expressions of contemporary American culture of the 1990s.

Acknowledging that there are several ways to study American art, Craven has chosen an approach that is current and accessible - a contextual treatment that discusses the works of art in the circumstances of their creation. The contexts he provides include the social, economic, and religious climates in which works were created; the political, philosophical, and technological movements that influenced their creators; and the scientific and literary postures that affected the forms the artworks took.

The narrative blends in biographical information and stylistic analysis along with the latest research on artists, architects, artisans, objects, archaeology, and techniques.

Illustrated with nearly eight hundred color and black-and-white pictures, American Art: History and Culture includes a bibliography that is significantly larger and more up-to-date than can be found in other books on American art, a glossary of art-historical terms, and two maps. Whether as a first look at American art or as a return visit to a field that has changed greatly in the last few years, this book is a matchless resource.