Arkansas ― A Concise History

Distilled from Arkansas: A Narrative History, the definitive work on the subject since its original publication in 2002, Arkansas: A Concise History is a succinct one-volume history of the state from the prehistory period to the present. Featuring four historians, each bringing his or her expertise to a range of topics, this volume introduces readers to the major issues that have confronted the state and traces the evolution of those issues across time.

After a brief review of Arkansas’s natural history, readers will learn about the state’s native populations before exploring the colonial and plantation eras, early statehood, Arkansas’s entry into and role in the Civil War, and significant moments in national and global history, including Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, the Elaine race massacre, the Great Depression, both world wars, and the Civil Rights Movement. Linking these events together, Arkansas: A Concise History offers both an understanding of the state’s history and a perspective on that history’s implications for the political, economic, and social realities of today.

Jeannie M. Whayne is university professor at the University of Arkansas. She is the author of Delta Empire: Lee Wilson and the Transformation of Agriculture in the New South and A New Plantation South: Land, Labor, and Federal Favor in Twentieth Century Arkansas.

Thomas A. DeBlack is retired professor of history at Arkansas Tech University. He is the author of With Fire and Sword: Arkansas, 1861–1874.

George Sabo III is professor of anthropology at the University of Arkansas and director of the Arkansas Archeological Survey. His publications include Rock Art in Arkansas and Paths of Our Children: Historic Indians of Arkansas.

Morris S. Arnold is a United States Circuit Judge for the Eighth Circuit. He is the author of Colonial Arkansas, 1686–1804: A Social and Cultural History and The Rumble of a Distant Drum: The Quapaws and Old World Newcomers, 1673–1804.