Looking to buy good history books. Especially American history. Any suggestions? (Vanity, I suppose)

11-27-02 | None

[Green Knight]

Alright, I've been meaning to buy a history book with detailed American history, but I'm leary of spending money on a Politically Correct piece of crud. So can you folks help me out, here?

I'd like A) A book which focuses specifically not only on the USA, but on the history that led up the founding of the United States, and B) A detailed look at world history (Being only one book, I can't imagine it'd be all that detailed). I'd also like C) A book detailing World War II.

Appreciate any and all help folks. Thanks.

[AnAmericanMother]

You know, I agree with you about original sources, but I don't think I'd START there. It's difficult to land right in the middle of folks from another century and figure out what's going on, without a bit of a road map.

I took a wonderful course in college called "Origins of the American Revolution" based entirely on original documents. Lots went on that you never hear about, and we spent an entire semester reading the personal correspondence, broadsides, diaries, etc. of the participants. The records of the Boston Massacre trials were particularly fascinating. John Adams was one heck of a trial lawyer -- he essentially got everybody off completely except for the man who actually fired the fatal shot, and he got his conviction reduced to manslaughter and then asserted benefit of clergy so the man was "just" burned on the hand (but compared to getting hanged that's a long step in the right direction). He also wrote wonderful letters - charming and easy reading even now.

[AnAmericanMother]

Isn't that neat? I have my grandfather-in-law's theological books (he was a Methodist minister) and he was a marginal notator and underliner. You can actually follow his sermon-writing process by the notes he made in the margins of his Bible and his other books. (He was a notable preacher, I heard him a couple of times when he subbed in after retirement. I didn't meet him until I met my husband, he was in his 70s by then. He must have been a firebrand in his prime.)

I also have the Civil War letters of two of my great-great grandfathers. It's very funny to contrast them. One was the captain of an artillery company, a fire-breathing death-or-glory boy from the word "go" - it was his company that pulled their 6 pdr Napoleons up Snodgrass Hill chasing George Thomas until nightfall (and that obnoxious Braxton Bragg) intervened. His letters home are very flowery and full of "our glorious cause", etc. etc. He was wounded three times, but lived until 1917, and was a big UCV man and instrumental in getting the Chickamauga National Battlefield Park up and running. He even looked like Col. Sanders - beard & mustache, white suit, string tie, the works.

My other great-great grandfather was a big lanky boy from a plantation in VERY rural Alabama, so shy he hardly ever said a word even late in life. He was a University of Georgia graduate, in civil engineering, enlisted as a private in the cavalry, became a scout or "partisan ranger" and never got promoted beyond private. He saw a lot of fighting and wrote about it to my g-g grandmother in a very understated, dry, and insouciant way . . . "the boys and I got in a tight little fight around Nashville . . . I had two bullets through my coat but not hurt. Chap Murrell was hit by a spent ball . . . he shouted, 'I am hit boys but no furlough.' . . . . A mess of greens sure would taste good right now. You know I could never relish greens at home. . . . . We received your parcel yesterday and we are making your eatables SQUAT." He did get flowery on occasion but not often (he's quoted in McPherson's book Why They Fought" and naturally the prof (who used to be my professor but was on sabbatical my senior year so wasn't my thesis advisor) picked out the only flowery passage the man ever wrote . . . "how can you ask me to stand by an idle spectator while my country lies bleeding in the dust?")

Frankly of the two I think the private the more interesting and fun.

[AnAmericanMother]

Funny about Lincoln. That was the same way that John Adams got one of the Boston Massacre defendants off -- with a deathbed statement of one of the victims, witnessed by one of Boston's most popular physicians.

[okie01]

Miracle at Philadelphia, the story of the Constitutional Convention, May-Sept, 1787.

You will never be prouder of your country and the men who conceived her than when you read how hard they worked to "get it right".

[Plutarch]

Albion's Seed

One of the most influential history books in the last 25 years. You will see America and Americans in a whole new way.

Synopsis
In the first volume of his cultural history of the United States, Fischer examines four seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English-speaking immigrant groups. Puritans from "East Anglia established a religious community in Massachusetts (1629-40); royalist cavaliers . . . from the south and west of England built a highly stratified agrarian way of life in Virginia (1640-70); egalitarian Quakers of modest social standing from the North Midlands resettled in the Delaware Valley and promoted a social pluralism (1675-1715); and . . . poor borderland families of English, Scots, and Irish {settled in the} . . . American backcountry. {Fischer argues that} these four cultures, reflected in regional patterns of language, architecture, literacy, dress, sport, social structure, religious beliefs, and familial ways, persisted in the American settlements." (Libr J)

[Inkie]

Whatever comprehensive text you choose, add WEALTH OF NATIONS and FEDERALIST PAPERS for enrichment.

[AnAmericanMother]

Once they allowed non-property-owners to vote and enter the jury pool, you wound up with a completely different sort of jury.

Although I am a southerner, I have the greatest respect for John Q., who was I believe a greater statesman than his father (did you hear the quip G.W. Bush made to that effect recently? :-D ) Politics is politics, it just depends on whose ox is getting gored today. But, as I told a black friend of mine who is a fellow attorney and classmate, I'm not going to condemn or desert my family members just because their political orientation is unpopular today, or even wrong. They were children of their times, just as we are, and some day something we are doing now -- probably something we don't even expect -- will cause us to be condemned out of hand by future generations. I don't want my descendants to disown me for that reason, so I won't disown my ancestors either.

[yarddog]

I am surprised (maybe even amazed) how much better our ancestors could write than we can.

I have a letter which was written by my g g father to his Son. I will not quote it at length as it would be of interest only to me but the first phrase began: "No tongue can tell the sweet pleasure that thrills through my heart as I am writing to my dear precious boy whom I have loved so long and for whom I have prayed so often and so earnestly." A little flowery and that is from memory so could be a little off but still so much better than I could do. The Son was nearly 40 years old at the time and a lawyer. BTW, ggf was a Methodist minister, and his Father was a prof, at your gggfathers school, Franklin College aka The University of Georgia.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Don't think any single book (on any one of those subjects)is going to be exactly what you're looking ofr ... there are over 50,000 books on the Civil War alone to choose from .)

Try this: Get a subscription to OLD NEWS for a monthly 12 page "newspaper" of many different history "stories" told in great detail over many differnt eras.

For example, one issue had Powell's explorations of the Grand Canyon, Boston's John Augustus's reforms of the civil court system, the Mayan's human sacrifices at the Sacred Well; how Alender Bell used a version of the telephone to magnetically detect a bullet in President Garfield for doctors, and how a Spaniard escaped the English Armada by crossing Ireland in 1589.

http://www.oldnewspublishing.com

[AnAmericanMother]

They wrote well because (1) they were TAUGHT how; (2) they had no telephones, no typewriters, and no Email! ;-D

My gg grandfather (the private) wrote the most wonderful letters to his little firstborn child, George, "as I have not heard from my wife in some time, I am resolved to write my darling little boy and see if he will answer me." He looked forward to "riding around with you and Mama to see the relations and view the crops" and told him to "be a big boy and protect Mama from all the boogers and h'ants"

Sadly, George died before his third birthday, and before my gg grandfather ever saw him. He's buried in a little tiny abandoned cemetery in Perote AL, far from his parents and his younger brothers and sisters, all buried down in Hurtsboro. I sometimes wonder if he's lonely . . .

[EternalVigilance]

One book I like alot is William Fedderer's 'America's God and Country'.

A really great book, but Bill is more than an American history scholar...he took on Gephardt for Congress twice in the past ten years.

[Verginius Rufus]

The Long Fuse: How England Lost the American Colonies, 1760-1785 is by Don Cook (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995)

Paul Revere's Ride is by David Hackett Fischer (Oxford University Press, 1994)

[cloud8]

Isn't that neat? I have my grandfather-in-law's theological books (he was a Methodist minister) and he was a marginal notator and underliner.

Sure is. My grandfather was a Presbyterian minister. He died when I was only 4, but he was a kindly man who sat me up on the piano bench and taught me to play and I remember how we sat on the couch and talked while music was playing. I often rely on his collected prayers as an inspiration for deaconing in the church we go to now.

[AnAmericanMother]

I feel like you and I each have an extra Advocate before the Throne. :-D

Our Reverend was such a good, holy man. I am as sure he is in Heaven as I am sure of anything. It's comforting to think that he'll sidle up to St. Peter at the appropriate time to make some comment about the weather, and then add, "By the way, this is my granddaughter coming in . . . "

[suijuris]

Green. Try what I did several years ago. Go to a used book store (preferably one that has been in business many years), and just browse the American History and Govt. Sections.

Got too many titles to detail here but purcahsed 30 t0 35 books for cheap (got them for the kids to counter what they are force fed in school).

I've found that American History and Govt. books published more than 50 years ago have a very honest approach; untainted by PC Bull$hit.

Sui