Witness to America: A Documentary History of the United States

Witness to America is a very unique book in that it is an assortment of individual snapshots to various points in our history and gives entertaining and brief essays on each snapshot. This is definatly a book you could read for a few minutes of borrowed time and then put back down, if you had to. I originally checked this book out at the local library because as a fan of Stephen Ambrose's books I found it interesting. After renewing it twice because I hated to part with it, I knew I had to buy a copy for my bookshelf. This is a great book and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

You have to understand what this book is before you can decide whether it will be of use to you. It is not a comprehensive history of the United States as told by Stephen Ambrose and Douglass Brinkley. Rather, it is a collection of 170 articles or vignettes on different, mostly well-known, events in American History. These articles are writings contemporaneous with the events described. There are also many illustrations and photographs and a really interesting audio CD with a number of selections dramatically recreated and some of them audio with the actual participants. Stephen Ambrose and Douglass Brinkley have based their text on previous edition done by Henry Steele Commager and Allan Nevins. Because these are selections and usually only one perspective is given of each event (editors always have to balance sweep and perspective with limited space), the viewpoints presented may differ with your own. However, I find the value of contemporary perspective quite valuable - especially in teaching my children. I can balance any bias I see with other books and by delving more deeply into the event described. But these articles make a great jumping off point. There is a bibliography providing the sources of each article, but there is not an index. Because of the nature of this book, the table of contents and the bibliography are probably enough.

When we learn of history, either that of the United States or the world, we more often than not hear it in the voice of someone who happens to have a degree in history and was born tens, hundreds, or even thousands of years after the events described in their work. Witness is a unique opportunity to see history through history's eyes. The pieces chosen necessarily reflect upon the times we live in now, but their meanings are left to the readers to ultimately determine for themselves. Ambrose and Brinkley provide a collection that should be passed down to succeeding generations of Americans so that they may have a glimpse of where Americans have been and where they may chose to go in the future.

This book is great for history and social studies teachers. The book is broken into small snipets of history that are the perfect length for one lesson. In a time when textbooks give only partial views on history slanted towards the views of the editors and publishers of the textbook, this is a refeshing use of primary source material. Ambrose and Brinkley let historic figures speak for themselves.

I love the way he lets people who were present tell the story. It is very enlightening, not your normal text book history. It is a must read for anyone with an open mind.