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Rating: 
Summary: The best modern history of the U.S. in my opinion
Review: By the late 1970s, conservative historian Clarence B. Carson was known as the author of several volumes on American intellectual, political and economic history, including *The Fateful Turn*, which chronicled America's abandonment of individualism in favour of collectivism in the years 1880-1960 and *The War on the Poor*, an examination of the disastrous effects of government programs to "help the poor".But Carson felt that a much longer work was needed to fulfil his intellectual mission: a complete history of the United States that would correct the errors and distorsions of those available on the market. For Carson was very dissatisfied with the existing histories of the U.S.. As he wrote in The Review of the News in December 1982: "For years I have cursed the darkness, so to speak, as I have examined and reviewed history book after history book. On rare occasions, I would examine one with rising expectations as I made my way through the early part of the text... But, from the Civil War onward, even the best of them tend to go downhill into the miasma of leaden accounts of industrialization, mass production, the class struggle, the magnification of the alleged injustices of the American system, until by the time they reach the New Deal, they read as if they were written by press agents of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Indeed, some have been". What he wanted was to avoid the biases of "Marxists, socialists, anti-Americans, skeptics, humanists, and many, many others with axes to grind", by committing himself to telling "as faithful an account as I could make it of what had actually taken place." This effort was to have been published by a private foundation, Western Goals, whose purpose was "to build and strengthen the political, economic and social structure of the United States and Western Civilization so as to make any merger with totalitarians impossible". But Carson's supporter in the foundation, U.S. Congressman Larry Mc Donald, was killed before the first volume had even been published: in an ironic twist of history, he died on board the Korean airliner that was shot down by the Soviets in 1983, along with 268 other innocent civilians. Undaunted, Carson the academic turned into a businessman, creating the American Textbook Committee, and went on to publish the rest of his work independently, relying mostly on word of mouth and the eventual promotion of his writings by conservative or libertarian bookclubs. The resulting history of the United States is definitely my favorite. While most modern historians assume that what the Founders created was a "democracy" which protected "civil rights", and that their efforts were finally crowned by the establishment of the welfare state in the last century, Carson does understand that the United States are a constitutional federated republic based on the classical doctrine of individual rights. For this reason, among many others, as Carson hoped it would, *Basic American History* succeeds in "arousing anew that sense of mission and purpose which brought these United States into being".
Rating:
Summary: I would even read it for recreational reading
Review: I had to read a lot of Carson's books for school. I enjoyed reading this history in particular. Everything is clearly spelled out, understandable, and makes perfect sense. Carson's tells the history that you won't find in most history books, which is very welcome.
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