Textbook recommendation?

[thomas e murray]

Can someone recommend a textbook for an undergraduate (junior-level)
course in American English in which, however, the students have
absolutely no background in linguistics?  Something, perhaps, that treats
topics in the history of American English (colonial American English, the
advent of Americanisms, Tall Talk, Noah Webster, Goold Brown and other
grammarians, etc.) as well as twentieth-century language variation and
usage?  Wolfram and Schilling-Estes's book may be a little advanced, and
in any case doesn't have the historical stuff I'm looking for.  Dillard's
book provides his view of the history, but doesn't do what I want with
dialectology/sociolinguistics.  I think I'm looking for something along
the lines of Charlton Laird's _Language in America_, now out of print for
many years.  Any suggestions?

Tom Murray
Kansas State University