[Future Snake Eater]

Johnson's "History of the American People" is the best book (next to ours) out there, but he has some big flaws that we hoped to fix.

I've always heard this book to be very highly recommended by American history buffs. What flaws does he have in his book?

[LS]

A lot---mostly little. He gets names, dates wrong. My biggest problem with his interpretations deals with economic issues. He still blames the Great Crash on "overspeculation," despite a lot of economic evidence to the contrary. He doesn't tell a very consistent economic story, if you will, beginning with the 1830s, where he misses the Bank War.

I think he misses the real significance of the 1950s; and, of course, stops sooner than we do.