Rating: 
Summary: How Not to Repeat History
Review: I first read this book as a child when it was first published. I still recommend it to anyone who thinks our environmental controls are too harsh, our workers' rights are too lenient, our government too involved. I also recommend it to those who feel we've done nothing for our environment, nothing for our children, nothing for our minorities. This is THE primer to how our country can be yet again, if we don't learn from this very accurately portrayed history. I wish more universities offered this book as part of a course on American History - regardless of what slant the class takes, this book speaks volumes more than any other history book I've ever read.
Rating:
Summary: A recommended read for anyone nostalgic
Review: I recommend this for people who romaticize the past, because we often forget how far we have come. Things back then were terrible, like crime, health, liberties, and so on. You always see the "Gay 90s" portrayed in Disney films as glorious and clean and everyone is civilized to have tea at 4, but in reality, most of us were living in tepid, diseased squalor with open corruption running rampant. This book doesn't read heavily like a stern textbook, but is very informative without being preachy. This is a great "bathroom reader" type of book with small, heavily-illustrated chapters, consice writing, and easy-to-understand narrative. It will really make you appreciate how good we have it now, even if we still have a ways to go. This is one of my favorite books of all time in my reference shelf.
Rating:
Summary: A recommended read for anyone nostalgic
Review: I recommend this for people who romaticize the past, because we often forget how far we have come. Things back then were terrible, like crime, health, liberties, and so on. You always see the "Gay 90s" portrayed in Disney films as glorious and clean and everyone is civilized to have tea at 4, but in reality, most of us were living in tepid, diseased squalor with open corruption running rampant. This book doesn't read heavily like a stern textbook, but is very informative without being preachy. This is a great "bathroom reader" type of book with small, heavily-illustrated chapters, consice writing, and easy-to-understand narrative. It will really make you appreciate how good we have it now, even if we still have a ways to go. This is one of my favorite books of all time in my reference shelf.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: I used to read this book over and over when I was a kid. I always found it very fascinating. I can't believe it's still around. I thought it was out of print.
Rating: 
Summary: To Roco, about Bettman criticising America
Review: Mr. Bettman in discussing the old days should not have made Europe sound (in any way) superior. It wasn't. It was inferior. He did not have to pick on the US specifically one bit. Yet he did! He was wrong for it.
Rating:
Summary: I too feel Bettmann was out to get America!
Review: One, yes if many crimes went unreported in America how we do know they really all occurred?Two, I also noticed comparisons with Europe in the book and Bettmann clearly gives Europe the upper hand in his biased and wrong assessment. All due respect to this probably Jewish author but answer me this question Dr. Bettmann. If Europe was so much better in the 19th century than the US why were tens of millions of the former's people fleeing to (mostly) the US? Bettmann, if he is Jewish, should love America. The Americans gave Jews freedom and eventually Israel. You listening Dr. Bettmann (in the great beyond)?
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Reality Check - Not "Anti-US" at all
Review: Otto Bettmann's "The Good Old Days - They Were Terrible!" is really kick to the head in terms of establishing reality with folks who think everything was so much better and more simple in the "good old days." Filled with interesting graphics and drawings, this book covers all the bases from food safety to crime to public education. Barely a sacred cow is left untouched. I've owned this book for more than ten years and it never fails to catch my interest when I pick it up again. I've also shown it to many of my friends and even given it as a gift. As for this notion of "anti-US," this seems a bit simplistic. The author's intention seems pretty clear - to establish 19th century America as a pretty dangerous place to live. There are few, if any, comparisons to Europe. It's not intended to be a book about how "bad the US is compared to country X." No, this is about just telling it like it is (or rather, was). Being honest about our past does us no harm. Indeed, it allows us to be become even better in the future. It's called learning from your mistakes. And Bettman's book is an excellent place to start learning.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Reality Check - Not "Anti-US" at all
Review: Otto Bettmann's "The Good Old Days - They Were Terrible!" is really kick to the head in terms of establishing reality with folks who think everything was so much better and more simple in the "good old days." Filled with interesting graphics and drawings, this book covers all the bases from food safety to crime to public education. Barely a sacred cow is left untouched. I've owned this book for more than ten years and it never fails to catch my interest when I pick it up again. I've also shown it to many of my friends and even given it as a gift. As for this notion of "anti-US," this seems a bit simplistic. The author's intention seems pretty clear - to establish 19th century America as a pretty dangerous place to live. There are few, if any, comparisons to Europe. It's not intended to be a book about how "bad the US is compared to country X." No, this is about just telling it like it is (or rather, was). Being honest about our past does us no harm. Indeed, it allows us to be become even better in the future. It's called learning from your mistakes. And Bettman's book is an excellent place to start learning.
Rating:
Summary: better understanding of history
Review: People often like to think as our past being absouletly perfect. Good Old Days takes a look at American life in the late 1800s and early 1900s and examines what life was like for the common person. The book provides a documentation of the probelems of the era such as air pollution, bad traffic, poor housing and education. The book is extremely easy to read and provides a great deal of useful information.
Rating: 
Summary: Tells it the way it was
Review: The "good old days" covered in this book are the years of the late nineteenth century and the location is the United States. Bettmann examines most of the features of the daily life of the common people, noting how difficult it was, certainly not the way it is depicted in the movies. Thinking people have always wondered why the streets of Dodge City in the television series "Gunsmoke" were not covered with horse manure. The city streets certainly were. With no municipal garbage collection in most major cities, walking the streets was an adventure in dodging or climbing piles of refuse, dodging electrically driven trolleys, and avoiding criminals. With few laws regarding housing conditions, sanitation, education, labor conditions, and nonexistent social services, people were pretty much on their own.
Drawings are primarily used to illustrate the conditions, although some photographs are used. In chapter one, we learn that pigs roamed major cities such as New York City, Kansas City, and Cincinnati. Pollution was unregulated and rampant. In some cities the air was fouled with smoke, manure dust, the smell of rotting garbage and industrial chemicals freely released into the environment. Those who viciously attack government regulations should read books like this that accurately depict what things were like before governments set some reasonable rules for behavior.
This is a historical record of what things were really like in the last years of the nineteenth century. Life was hard for the overwhelming majority and if you had a bad break, it was just tough luck. It is a book that "tells it like it was", how the people lived with filth and worked very hard for very little.
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