Touching America's History brings readers in contact with the past through tangible objects and the history these objects evoke. America is a young country, making it possible for an individual to possess artefacts that evoke moments in the country's history ranging back as far as the 1600s. In Meredith Mason Brown's case, these objects include Indian stone tools, a forebear's compass, an 18th-century rifle, a letter signed by George Washington, a sword from the Mexican War, and other tangible remnants of America's past. Together, these widely different objects call to mind nothing less than the birth, growth, and shaping of what is now America, creating a unique survey across 400 years of the nation's history.