This study employed a qualitative content analysis design to examine the extent to which 8th and 11th-grade U.S. History textbooks, adopted by the State of Texas, foster historical empathy and disciplinary knowledge and skills in the subject of history through student engagement with textbook activities. The textbook activities collected for this study were those that specifically required students to respond in the voice, or from the perspective, of a historical figure or actor. A total of 744 activities were collected from a sample of 21 Texas adopted 8th or 11th-grade U.S. History textbooks. The activities were collected from different types of prompts, including those in section and unit assessments, unit and section previews, section comprehension or reading checks, and those associated with maps, charts, images, and supplementary text-based sources. The activities were analyzed according to two analytical frameworks established within existing scholarship related to historical empathy and disciplined historical inquiry. To ensure the reliability of the coding scheme and the overall analytical process, an expert coder was consulted. The researcher and the expert coder meet frequently over the span of a fourth-month period to code the activities and to maintain a one hundred percent inter-coder agreement. The results of the analysis revealed that students have few opportunities to learn and demonstrate both higher levels of historical empathy and historical knowledge if they engage with historical empathy textbook activities. Out of the 744 activities collected for this study, 686 required students to make generalized, stereotypical, and unsubstantiated conclusions about the perspectives of historical actors or groups. Additionally, of the 744 activities, 653 required students to solely rely on historical content knowledge to respond to the prompts. The historical content knowledge that students were predominantly encouraged to utilize was that required the simple repeating, recalling, or reformatting of information about a historical event or figure. As a result, teachers should not rely on historical empathy textbook activities as opportunities for students to develop and practice both historical empathy and historical knowledge, as their students will have limited opportunities to do so if they engage with the identified prompts. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]