Basic History of the United States: The Welfare State, 1929-1985

Rating:
Summary: The best history of 20th century US
Review: A straight forward, easy to read and understand explanation and description of 20th century US history. Why this is not taught is state run schools is strange since it is the most honest, comprehensive analysis of the strange events of the US government during the 1900's. He is completely objective in his work. He does not go into controversies such as FDR setting up the Pearl Harbor Attack in order to intentioanlly drag the US into WWII. He simply states what the record indicates in an extremely well written style. Carson is probably most knowledgable historian of this generation. This and his other works are must reads.

Rating:
Summary: harsh right-wing critique of liberalism/socialism
Review: i was looking for a `basic' recounting of american history from colonial until the present -- carson's text does a credible job until reconstruction -- where he becomes polemical (vol. 3). vols. 4 & 5 surprisingly become harsh right-wing critiques of the failure of american government/the courts/media and so on. in vol. 4 he has an unnecessary extended debunking of darwin, for example. unless you share his passion, you will likely find the one-sidedness and unrelenting `tell it like it was' style overbearing and disspiriting. paul johnson, for example, i believe shares carson's conservatism, but does not let it overwhelm his compelling surveys of history. on the other hand, apart from the cursory review of nearly all history in vol. 1, the recounting of american history from colonial times up until the war between the states seemed balanced and to meet the books modest aims. the narrator, mary woods, i believe, reads the text well. as an alternative survey of american history, you might consider daniel boorstein's (i didn't get the spelling right, i'm afriad) multi-volume work, the american experience. it is full of insight detail, but it is hard to extract a barebone basic history of our country from it. even with carson's bias, his volumes provide a good sense of america's time-line. it is a pity he has allowed his passion to cloud his sense, and in that sense i don't regret the printed versions of his text being out of print.

Rating:
Summary: harsh right-wing critique of liberalism/socialism
Review: i was looking for a `basic' recounting of american history from colonial until the present -- carson's text does a credible job until reconstruction -- where he becomes polemical (vol. 3). vols. 4 & 5 surprisingly become harsh right- wing critiques of the failure of american government/the courts/media and so on. in vol. 4 he has an unnecessary extended debunking of darwin, for example. unless you share his passion, you will likely find the one-sidedness and unrelenting `tell it like it was' style overbearing and disspiriting. paul johnson, for example, i believe shares carson's conservatism, but does not let it overwhelm his compelling surveys of history. on the other hand, apart from the cursory review of nearly all history in vol. 1, the recounting of american history from colonial times up until the war between the states seemed balanced and to meet the books modest aims. the narrator, mary woods, i believe, reads the text well. as an alternative survey of american history, you might consider daniel boorstein's (i didn't get the spelling right, i'm afriad) multi-volume work, the american experience. it is full of insight detail, but it is hard to extract a barebone basic history of our country from it. even with carson's bias, his volumes provide a good sense of america's time-line. it is a pity he has allowed his passion to cloud his sense, and in that sense i don't regret the printed versions of his text being out of print.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent! The best in the series so far
Review: Though a great admirer of Clarence Carson's works in general, I had found the first four volumes of his history of the United States slightly less interesting than more thematic essays like *The Fateful Turn* or *The Flight From Reality*. Maybe it is because Carson is more at home in pure intellectual history, or because I myself prefer concepts over facts and chronology.

However, Carson's *Basic History of the United States* remains in my opinion the most reliable on the market. As a professor of American history, it is the only one I personally recommend to my students, and the best of the six complete histories of the U.S. I have read so far.

The six-volume series is divided into the following periods: 1- The Colonial Experience 1607-1774; 2- The Beginning of the Republic 1775-1825; 3- The Sections and Civil War 1826-1877; 4- The Growth of America 1878-1928; 5- The Welfare State 1929-1985; 6- America in Gridlock 1985-1995.

The fifth volume itself is comprised of ten chapters: The Great Depression, The Thrust of the New Deal, Toward the Welfare State, The Coming of World War II, The United States in World War II, The Cold War, Welfarism at Home and Abroad, A Second Radical Reconstruction 1960-1975 and The Conservative Response.

To those of you who are sick of the deification of FDR and JFK and the vilification of Hoover and McCarthy, you will find a treatment of these key figures that radically departs from the established liberal gospel. Hoover's exceptional charity after World War I is brilliantly documented, and his refusal to enact welfare reforms on a large scale is attributed not to a lack of compassion but to the fact that "as President of the United States, he was the head of the government, not theretofore thought of as a charitable organization".

Roosevelt, on the other hand, is presented as "a candidate seeking votes, not losing them by presenting hard choices", who in his campaign speeches, dishonestly presented himself as an opponent of government expansion: "I accuse the present [Hoover] Administration of being the greatest spending Administration in peace times in all our history. It is an Administration that has piled bureau on bureau, commission on commission... I regard the reduction of Federal spending as one of the most important issues of his campaign."

Carson goes on to show how the Constitution was brutally abused by the New Deal, approvingly quoting from H. L. Mencken's hilarious "Constitution for the New Deal" and concluding with a chapter on "New Deal Hoopla and Harsh Reality".

Carson's characterizations of the major political figures of the era are masterpieces of concision and lucidity. Of Roosevelt's wife Eleanor, he says that "she never shook off the settlement house mentality. As a President's wife for many years, she was inclined to view the whole United States as a social work project". As for Eisenhower, Carson says that although "he referred to himself sometimes as being 'basically conservative'" and "favored a greater separation of powers than recent presidents had practiced", he soon abandoned all pretense to being an opponent of socialist legislation, as his administration "shifted away not only from any foray toward dismantling the Welfare State but also from vigorously restraining it. Indeed, Eisenhower was detectably moving toward modest extensions if not expansions of welfarism."

Kennedy is shown as a "somewhat inept, inexperienced and at best mediocre" president who was turned into a national hero by Johnson's politically motivated exploitation of his televised martyrdom.

As for "McCarthyism", instead of describing it as a paranoid and totalitarian witch-hunt, Carson shows how liberals managed to shift public indignation and fears from the very real threat of Communism to McCarthy's occasionally excessive methods, and have used what Ayn Rand called the pseudo-concept of McCarthyism as "a convenient weapon to beat anyone over the head with who begins to gain an audience for charges against" communists.

But the greatest treat in the book is Carson's chronicling of the intellectual and political rebirth of conservatism from the 1940s to the 1980s. Here you will find information on the pillars of modern conservatism, from Friedrich Hayek to Ludwig Von Mises, Ayn Rand, William F. Buckley, Russell Kirk, Leonard Read and others I had never heard of, and the various books and reviews in which they defended their ideas. Carson's treatment of Rand is unfortunately unfair and not very well informed. He presents her as an emigrant "from Europe", for instance, instead of stressing her first-hand experience of Soviet tyranny. And like many critics, he fails to grasp the difference Objectivism makes between altruism and benevolence.

But such flaws as Carson's *Basic History of the United States* evinces are so minor in comparison with the massive distortions of liberal textbooks that this six-volume history stands high above any of its competitors.