Pocket History of the United States

It has been 50 years since I have read a history of the United States, having graduated from college with only in-depth education of courses in the military history of the United States.I recently had occasion to read George Washington's Farewell Address. I was struck by the scope and scholarship of the amazing document, wondering how our first president knew so much. I then realized that I had not really thought much about the founding of our nation in a long time; that I really didn't remember enough of the founding or the subsequent events throughout the history as a whole. The Pocket History of the United States fills the bill perfectly for me. What I wanted is all there and can be read in a reasonable length of time. One of the main reasons I selected this book from a wide selection was that so much was written before the beginning of WWII and therefore I expected that it would have the author's perspective of the world as I knew it in my most formative years. I find that some modern historical writing blurs the black and white, right and wrong, obscuring and slanting the details I wanted to know. I was happy to find WWII and the following eras covered in the same book in much the same tone as the origional author.

Being a Canadian not at all versed in the minutea of US History I decided on a solitary visit to the US one summer and, at the Smithsonian, purchased this book. Although my US history is certainly spotty compared to Canadian or British Imperial History I am well used to the "Cook's Tour" narrative style of this type of book; whether it applies to the US, Australia or India, it is impossible to encapsulate all relevant history in one text. How and what one does incorporate is important.To see the text as politically motivated badly misses the point. People with extreme political blinders of the so-called "right" or "left" will always look for, and find, whatever they want to find. When reading history one finds out as much about the American people who consider this to be their history as one learns about the actual events themselves. The FDR Truman New Deal lives on and for people like me who only know FDR as the reformer he apparently was, this book only reinforces that view. The vagaries of the Robber Barons and Teddy Roosevelt's attempts to riegn them in are also wonderfully free of ideology --- old fashioned excesses of greed and lack of any positive government role being explanation enough. On the other side of the coin there is also what an outsider would refer to as the typical "pablum" which every American was raised upon: Americans somehow suffering a great injustice at the hands of the British. An injustice that is really really not that self-evident: the Boston Massacre was not a massacre (the Americans absolved the troops and commander of any blame at the time); the "battles" of Concord and Lexington not being battles but being built into mythic proportions that persist to this day; and why did the Americans really get so rebellious about, of all things, a tax. Still, having said that, compared with comparable flag-waving narrative best-sellers in American history this book does not even rate. The authors even quite correctly describe the sound American drubbing and defeat in the War of 1812. Something that a lot of lesser Americans historians try to obsfucate. No unneccessary flag waving here.The description of the vital American character is also included in the beginning chapters. The founding groups in the nascent colonies were vastly different from those groups who followed and built similar colonies in Australia, New Zealand and nearby Canada. The battle between dogmatic protestant religious offshoots and secular authority was a basic element of American society. Although religious groups remained strong (Commanger & Steel describe the colonial Massachussets theocracy) their potential to deprive people of their liberty has always spawned a strong rational, reasoned opposition which ultimately wrote the constitution and established America as the strong secular nation she is today.I would recommend this book to almost anyone without a narrow old-fashioned ideological axe to grind. The pre-1941 part of the book was originally wr

Nevins and Commager wrote a traditional, well reasearched and accurate history of the United States. Their bias, if any, was that of traditional, FDR/Harry Truman Democrats. Their treatment of history was fair in that it was, on the one hand, patriotic yet, on the other hand, exposed many of the warts of our history. The revision, by Jeffrey Morris was shocking. Because most of the book is so excellent, I still rate it four stars but the chapters from the Eisenhower administration on are written in a tone entirely different from that of the original authors. The chapter on Eisenhower inaccurately depicts him as a do nothing president. Recent scholarship, including biographies of Eisenhower by Stephan Ambrose and Jeffery Perret, show that Eisenhower, in fact was very much in control and his often detached demeanor was calculated. It seems that Morris can find almost nothing right with America. He comes down way too harshly on Reagan. He seems to spare only JFK for whom he seems to be in the throes of hero worship. The original authors, in the first 85% of the book strike a balance. They do not whitewash but, they also do not seek to only denigrade the United States. Indeed, they give particularly excellent coverage of World War II. I also found their coverage of the age of the robber barons to be subperb. Although traditional and patriotic, they did not whitewash this era of history. For an interesting contrast to the interpretation of the late 20th century presidents, read "A History of the American People" by Paul Johnson which is as opinionated in the other direction.

This little book is chock full of usefulinformation. Even though the book does have a rather patriotic, biased slant to it, it can be very useful, and very helpful

I remember this book well from my school days. Starting in elementary school, I read and re-read this book over the years. I knew the section on the Great Depression almost by memory. So, when I saw the updated version, I had to buy it to replace my worn, dog-eared paperback. The original only covered the US up until about 1960. Unfortunately, the additional chapters were done by a new author (the original one had died). So I was very much looking forward to reading about the history of the US that I had actually lived through in my life. However, when I read the new chapters added to my beloved book I was horrified. The outrageous bias shown by the new author was disgusting. Aside from the chapter on the Bush years, the last few chapters are incredible distortions (though well written) of reality. I was forced to take scissors and cut these pages out! Unfortunately, even this history cuts off in 1992 so it will be a long time until the next update. I can only hope that history is written without such "political correctness." I was very disappointed with these last chapters --- and I was saddened that such a respected book could be destroyed by such garbage. So I rate the book a 10 until recently added pages, which I rate a -1 for awfulness.