Rating: 
Summary: the disgusting old days is more like it
Review: This book is absolutely harrowing and makes one wonder how America lasted until the 20th century -- learn the 19th century origins of the U.S. drug problem (children got hooked on the morphine and the opium in the patent medicines given to them to calm them down, for example) and why the Prohibition might not actually have been an over-reaction to alcohol; learn how our public school system originated as a rote memorization factory in which children ill-fed, ill-taught, and ill-washed crammed onto benches while an ignorant man or woman, not paid enough for even room and board, tried to keep some semblance of order (for which endeavor one schoolteacher got stoned to death for her pains); learn how common were the transportation accidents of the day, in which railroad tracks went through towns without regard to the usual traffic and a propensity for cutting the maintenance costs meant dangerous conditions for those on and off the train.This book does not go into exhaustive detail (even if it exhausts the reader), and is illustrated with clippings from magazines and newspapers of the time. One other reviewer complained that photographs weren't used, but truthfully I don't =want= to see the photographs of the conditions. The drawings and the text provide enough horror, and I think Dr. Bettman did not want to put readers off =too= much. Also, the drawings from the press give one information that photographs would not have -- the perspective of the people at the time. Many of the drawings come with captions or some doggerel poetry, indicating how well people knew what disgusting things they were getting into.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and Educational!
Review: This book is amazing. I work at Greenfield Village, and no one there ever told us this is what life was like. This book gives an interesting, fun look at the way things used to be in the late 1800's. I think it's a perfect book for teaching about life during that time. I would often read it at the village, and now I've bought a copy for myself so I can teach it in my classroom. It's a great book, and some of the stuff in it really makes you think about the world we live in today and how much better it truly is.
Rating: 
Summary: Enjoyable book
Review: This book was quite fascinating. In fact my only complaint is I wish it was longer and more detailed. More real photographs should have been used instead of the many illustrated drawings. Some more depth on certain subjects would have added much. For instance some more detailed descriptions on everyday life, especially those dealing with jobs and work. I would have also liked to know more about doctors, the medicines used of the time, and treatments for various diseases and ailments. Perhaps other topics on if communities were really more close-knit than now, that if people were more friendly as compared to today. Still enjoyed the book, but the author needed to add another 100 to 150 pages.
Rating:
Summary: Immerse yourself in the true 19th century reality .
Review: This is the best reference that I have found for putting one's self into the true 19th century mindset. The illustrations are especially good (the author was the founder of the Bettmann Archive.)
Most people think that they know this period from romantisized Hollywood films, but they really don't. Imagine a 3 mile-per-hour world. Imagine a world where, except for a handful of streets with gas street lamps, the biggest cities went almost totally black after night fall. Imagine a world with no telephones, no data bases, no social security numbers, no fingerprint files- where if you move to a different neighborhood and assume a new identity it is very unlikely that you will ever be discovered. Imagine a world where there is little communication between police precincts in the same city, let alone between cities. And the police that do exist are of the most unprofessional and rudimentary sort- and primarily interested in collecting graft and protecting the rich. Now imagine workplaces where there are no health and safety laws, no minimum wage laws, and where people put in at least 12 hours a day at the most soul-killing menial labor. Imagine gangs of children roaming the streets out of control because their parents are in the mills 12 hours a day- or just abandoned them because they don't earn enough to feed them. Imagine the great cities surrounded not by suburbs, but by rings of smouldering garbage dumps and shanty towns. This isn't the Third World- this was America only a century ago.
Oh yes, and if you think that farm life was much better- think again....
No wonder all we have are romantisized stories of the "good old days." No wonder our great grandparents didn't talk much about those days....
Rating:
Summary: The "Good" Old Days?
Review: What an incredible book! Interesting, informative, eye-opening, and unflinching. Tells the grim truth about life in nineteenth century industrial America, focusing on the cities (especially New York), but touching on the hardships and unpleasantness of rural life as well. The illustrations are as valuable as the text--and Bettman's list of sources is outstanding. Social history at its best!
Rating: 
Summary: Proof Bettman had it in for America specifically
Review: When describing american trains he mentions the USA's trains had five times as many problems as those of Great Brtain in 1890. Sure the USA"s trains did! In 1890 the US's population was twice that of GB's (a fact Bettman seemingly didn't know or just didn't take into account). Also, we had way more land than GB did and more trains and tracks werre needed to cover all our country. Plus we had more mountain ranges to go over by train than people in GB did. Book is biased after all.
Rating:
Summary: Bettman was out to get America
Review: While his book The Good Days They Were Terrible is interesting and informative it possesses one big drawback. Realize first that America was the destination of many, many millions of Europeans in the late 1800's. Bettman however picks on America specifically as if the rest of the world was a great place in the late 1800's, like in being pretty free of crime. Whie he has apparently a lot of facts straight (though he loses credibility with me just a little when it comes to crime in America, I am not sure that New York and other American cites were really 100% as infested with crooks as he shows them to be: since many of these crimes were never reported in these cities how do we know they all actually took place?) he's biased against the US and he makes Europe sound so grand. Actually the crime in Europe's London and Paris could have indeed been very, very high at certain points but maybe European victims didn't report crimes as much as America's crime victims did because out there in Europe the police may have represented the monarchy-type state more than they represented public safety, so unlike the cops in the US! Also, sometimes Bettman becomes almost hypocritical in his philosophies about 19th American cops. He made it look like almost all of them were very bad. Yet he often makes them look so good in other arts of his book! And, also, if someone in America was declared insane for committing a crime that could have very often meant at least a little time in the insane asylum, right? Bettman shows how totally bad life in the 19th centure asylums were. But in another part of his book he makes the declared-insane-crook look like he was getting off super easy! Which one was it? BTW remember or realize Bettman was from Europe himself.
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