American Heritage History of the United States

Rating:
Summary: Excellent overview!
Review: although i am not sure that i feel this book deserves five stars, that is what i gave it because i wanted to even out the other reviews - i feel that they are rather harsh. despite the fact that this might not be the most thorough book ever, it is lively and entertaining, and has many wonderful pictures that sum up our history quite well. i also found it quite useful when writing a thesis paper on the navigation acts, which were quite difficult to find information on elsewhere. i believe that this book is at least worth a skim at the library, if not a purchase for the coffee table.

Rating:
Summary: More Than a Textbook
Review: Douglas Brinkley's American Heritage History of the United States has all the marks of one of those terrible textbooks we were force fed in High School and college. Glossy pictures, special topic sections, maps, history capsulated into eras, the book has all the appearance of something written by a committee. When you were a teen, the best thing about it was that lots of photos meant less text.

Thankfully, American Heritage History of the United States was not written by a committee. Mr. Brinkley's text has personality, even humor, and intelligence. It flows smoothly and retains the reader's interest. I learned more than I had known and probably even remember some of it, which is more than I can say for my High School textbooks.

Concerning the subject itself, it is almost impossible to be entirely objective when it comes to history, any history. It is much to Mr. Brinkley's credit that I was unable to determine his political background, a question that is usually, unfortunately, answered far too soon far too often. (There appears to be a fine line with history between analysis and polemics.) Mr. Brinkley does have opinions and does voice them, but he is ultimately more concerned with portraying the facts of the matter at hand, whatever the matter at hand may be. He reminds the reader, on a fairly generous basis, that problems arising in one president's term of office may have begun in a prior president's term of office if not further back or may have nothing to do with the presidential office at all.

Recommendation: It's big and it's heavy. The price isn't bad for a big, heavy hardcover filled with photographs, just make sure you have somewhere to put it.

Rating:
Summary: I am tired of Political Correctness
Review: I am tired of Political Correctness. I am tired of even hearing that term. Do we now have to distort, truncate, alter and omit events in our own History to please some unknown enigmatic entity or group that we can not even define? Political Correctness is a name for a witch-hunt in my opinion. The witch-hunt in this case is a quest not to offend. Offend whom? Our selves? We are all Americans in this country. People of all races, color and creed died to preserve our American Heritage and freedoms that no other country in the world can equal. This book would have you think otherwise.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: Ignore the negative reviews. Mr. Brinkley succeeded brilliantly in condensing American history into 600-paged illustrated volume. Of course, some parts will be left out and the author makes no secret out of it. I think he managed to provide an unbiased view on the course of the crucial events in the American history, which is a Herculean task in itself. This volume is supposed to make you want to find out more and so it does. Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant.

Rating:
Summary: Not Perfect, But A Decent Review of US History
Review: It's a daunting challenge to tackle a subject as vast as the History of the United States -- a topic, like the United States itself, rooted as much in emotion and propaganda as in facts and the truth. Texts such as these almost always invite criticism, which makes you wonder why the people who believe they know more than the author do not write books on the subject themselves.

I, for one, believe Brinkley did a remarkable job, although the book remains a little too superficial for my own tastes. Still, Brinkley said himself that this book "is not aimed to please academic scholars or specalists" and admitted that he "had nightmares about receiving letters of disappointment." Come to think of it, the entire introduction reads like an apology for the book you are about to read. Not exactly confidence-inspiring but I think Brinkley does indeed underestimate his own work. It is a very healthy review of American History. The text is thorough without being too weighty, the story flows extremely well without getting too sidetracked (which kills many historical texts and with good reason -- American History is an inherently complicated subject that doesn't always lend itself to a flowing, linear narrative) and personally I didn't find the book's errors too egregious (although the other reviewer was absolutely right -- the Greenbacks error is hilarious, though hardly earth shattering).

The political correctness charge is more subjective, and I invite everone to make up their own mind about that. Personally, I found it refreshing that Brinkley didn't portray the men who colonized this land as the romantic, globetrotting heroes we read about in elementary school. Let's face it -- they were selfish, greedy men whose wanderlust was financed for religious, political, social, and economic gain. As for the Aztecs, they weren't exactly the innocents Brinkley would have us believe but it still doesn't excuse what Cortez did to their magnificent civilization. That's just one example. You can call that political correctness, but I haven't discovered a text yet that deviates from that fact.

The most astounding aspect of this text is its exclusion of the Native American story -- an exclusion Brinkley himself apologizes for (he blames "space limitations"), again in the introduction, as he directs us to a couple of other texts for a more complete telling of Native American History. How could you have a book entitled "History of the United States" with such brief, cursory mentions of the people who inhabited this land before most of us got here? It's almost inexcusable, really. Then again, considering this country's treatment of Native Americans over the centuries, it's almost cruelly fitting that "space limitations" pushed their story out of the book.

Overall, a worthwhile book, though not exactly a text that historians will reference for years to come. But, again, as Brinkley said, that's not the purpose of this book.

Rating:
Summary: Okay, Here's the Deal...
Review: Judging from previous reviews, apparently if you're a US history afficionado you should stay away from this book.

However, if like me you've always fallen asleep in history class, this is the book for you. Don't get me wrong; history is my hobby--WORLD history, that is. With US history, it seems I've had the great misfortune of having professors who loved to dwell on minutia. And since minutia is tremendously dreary when the student doesn't first have the overall picture, it is no wonder many of us find ourselves "otherwise engaged" in class.

I am an American adult who decided it was time to know more about our nation's past, and chose a one-volume work to get me started. I found Douglas Brinkley easy to read, in spite of the fact that his book is larger and weighs more than a small household pet. I've always deduced that because America is so much younger than old world countries, instructors have felt a need to compensate for its history's brevity by weighing it down with innumerable bits of information that are probably better left to the next course level. But I did not feel that way reading Brinkley. More than once, I found myself muttering "so that's what that was about...". The conversational writing style and supporting illustrations made for, if not exactly a page-turner, the closest thing a history book can get to that.

Although it is obvious from page one that the author has very strong beliefs, they are so blatant that I did not feel it was a hindrance--any reasonable adult will question whether the characters and events were truly as noble or ominous as the writer has painted them, and readers should certainly never make judgments based on one book alone anyway. This work is really just to have an overview of US history, and people can decide from there what they'd like to learn more about. To include all the details other reviewers felt should have been in this book would have made it the size of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Just one more thing--who the heck IS Emma Goldman????? ;-)