Good US History Book?

n/a | 05 December, 2002 | self

[batter]

I wanted to get a friend a good US history book. I need some recommendations from freepers. Basically, I would want a book that covers US history up to (or relatively close to) the present time (i.e. not just a specific time/event in history). However, I would like the book have a fair amount of detail (e.g. the civil war would be covered by more than just 5 pages), so I think I would be looking at a 500+ page book (although I wouldn't mind hearing of other books that may be less than 500 pages too). Lastly, I want to make sure that I don't get some 'revisionist' history trash in the book.

[batter]

Freepers: I would love to hear your suggestions!

[ozzie]

"A Basic History of the United States" by Clarence Carson is a small 5 volume set. I think it is really outstanding and has a conservative bent to it freeing it of most left wing bias that is so pervasive today.
The other obvious volume is "A History of the American People" by Paul Johnson.
Both should be in your library.

[Middle Man]

A History Of The American People by Paul Johnson. At 1000+ pages, still a compulsively readable book by one of the greatest living historians.

[TomGuy]

Do an internet search on history/historical ebooks. One series of commentaries (through about 1900) is The Great Republic by Historical Masters. A massive amount of historical text is online if you take the time to search it out and then weed through it. That way, you are not restricted to the opinions or viewpoints of a single authorship/editorship.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

"To America," personal reflections of an historian, by Stephen Ambrose.
He wrote Band of Brothers which was made into a series on HBO recently. About 250 pages and very well done.

[bcoffey]

To whatever "factual" histories you find, add the following sociological analysis to understand the "why:"

The Fourth Turning by Strauss and Howe.

Web site is here. (The site is not well organized; the book is much better.)

[tallhappy]

It's Great Republic by the Master Historians.

Volume 1

Volume II

Thanks Tomguy.

Here's an index page to the Public Bookshelf.

[Lou L]

Oh, oh! What's the one by Peter Jennings..?

< /dripping sarcasm >

[ml/nj]

A History Of The American People by Paul Johnson. At 1000+ pages, still a compulsively readable book by one of the greatest living historians.

I have recently discovered that this book is vastly overrated. In fact, I would now label it "trash."

It sat mostly unopened on my shelf since its publication, until a footnote in another book I was reading caused me to follow its reference to the Johnson book. Writing about Thomas Jefferson, Johnson says:

From claret to concubinage, there was no delight he did not sample, or rather indulge in habitually. (p. 242)

So Jefferson's wife was in intimate daily contact ... with her husband's concubine. (p. 242)

Jefferson's expensive tastes might not have proved so fatal to his principles had he not also been an amateur architect of astonishing persistence and eccentricity. (p. 244)

It is just as well that Jefferson had no sense of humor: he constitutes in his own way an egregious comic character, accident-prone and vertiginous, to whom minor catastrophes accrued. (p. 246)

As originally built his bedroom [at Monticello] accorded him no privacy at all, a curious oversight considering he had a passion for being alone and unobserved. Thereafter the search for privacy became an obsession in the many changes of design ... Contemporaries assumed they were there so his alleged mistress, Sally Hemmings, could slip in and out of his chamber unobserved. (p. 247)

Now whatever one thinks of the supposed affair between Jefferson and Hemmings, and I believe it to be complete and utter BS, it is hard to get around the fact that Jefferson's wife died when Sally Hemmings was not yet nine years old. Suggesting that Martha Jefferson was in "intimate daily contact with he husband's concubine," is alone sufficient to disqualify Johnson as a serious historian. I tried to follow some of Johnson's footnotes, but found them either irrelevant or dead ends for me. (My personal library does have its limitations.) As for the "contemporaries" description of Jefferson's quarters, I would offer:

His apartments had no private entrance not perfectly accessible and visible to all the household. No female domestic ever entered his chambers except at hours when he was known not to be there, and none could have entered without being exposed to the public gaze.

This is from a letter written in 1858 by a Jefferson granddaughter. (See http://www.geocities.com/tjshcommission/coolidge.htm)

As for the snide comments like "amateur architect," well I guess Johnson never visited the University of Virginia. Why would he have wanted to? There are scholars there.

ML/NJ

[aruanan]

There are three that are the most interesting of all U.S. history books I've read. They are by Daniel J. Boorstin:

The Americans: The Colonial Experience (Up to the Revolutionary War
The Americans: The National Experience (From the Revolutionary War to the Civil War
The Americans: The Democratic Experience (Post-Civil War)

[LiteKeeper]

me2

[Middle Man]

To each his own. My fandom of Johnson didn't start with his History of The American People. I've been reading him for many years (ever since his book on Elizabeth Rex) and have always enjoyed and benefitted from his perspective. Same with Antony Beevor and John Keegan. I find English historians have a much higher standard of scholarship and are freer of the politicial biases that poison most "history" written by American academics (the late Stephen Ambrose being a significant exception).

Agreed, the Hemmings-Jefferson affair was bogus from the start and was reeking to high heaven from the time I first got wind of it. It was the resume-challenged Joseph Ellis of Mt. Holyoke College who suddenly published "proof" of the Hemmings-Jefferson affair at a critical moment to diffuse the Clinton impeachment proceedings. The exposure of Ellis's faked research on the Hemmings-Jefferson debacle came after Johnson published his History, though.

[steve-b]

The exposure of Ellis's faked research on the Hemmings-Jefferson debacle came after Johnson published his History, though.

And perhaps the exposure of the fact that Hemmings was nine years old when Jefferson's wife died also came after Johnson published his History.

No, I'm afraid that Johnson is Bellisles's opposite number -- a careless (at best) "historian" admired by those who share his biases.

[Middle Man]

"Johnson is Bellisles's opposite number..."

ROTFLMAO!

[ml/nj]

To each his own. My fandom of Johnson didn't start with his History of The American People. I've been reading him for many years (ever since his book on Elizabeth Rex) and have always enjoyed and benefitted from his perspective. Same with Antony Beevor and John Keegan. I find English historians have a much higher standard of scholarship and are freer of the politicial biases that poison most "history" written by American academics (the late Stephen Ambrose being a significant exception).

This isn't "my own." This isn't a small matter like getting the details of an event slightly wrong because a consulted source had it wrong. Thomas Jefferson is arguably the greatest intellectual in our nation's history. Any historian worth his salt would know that and not provide an entirely opposite view without substantial new or obscure information, well documented from a variety of sources. (E.g. I do not hold Lincoln in high regard. In response to a question about Lincoln's character raised by an acquaintance where I offered a contrarian view citing his actions in connection with the Baltimore Plot, I provided highlighted copies from NY Times microfilm, highlighted copies from three histories, plus an observation that many other mainstream histories I have access to ignore the Baltimore Plot altogether.)

After I posted what I did, I went over to Amazon and did a search on JEFFERSON and ARCHITECTURE. There were 19 hits. One title says it all about Jonhson's small comments: Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826 : primo architetto americano."

Johnson may be a good story teller. I don't know. But after reading what he had to say about Thomas Jefferson, it would be silly to view anything he has written as non-fiction. You may think you've benefitted from his perspective, but more likely you've been fooled by his faux scholarship.

ML/NJ

[rustbucket]

To each his own. My fandom of Johnson didn't start with his History of The American People.

Some reviews I have seen have noted many factual flaws in Paul Johnson's A History of the American People. I have a quibble myself with some of his work. About the formation of the Confederacy, Johnson says:

"In his inaugural, Davis [Confederate President Jefferson Davis] said the Confederacy was born of 'a peaceful appeal to the ballot box.' That is not true. No state held a referendum. It was decided by a total of 854 men in various secession conventions, all of them selected by legislatures, not the voters."

Texas had a secession convention of people elected for the purpose of considering secession. After the convention, the question of secession was submitted to the voters of the state. It passed by a large margin on February 23, 1861. The elected members of the secession convention then reassembled and joined the Confederacy on March 5, 1861. Some other Southern states (but not all) also held voter referendums, but I don't know the details.

[Middle Man]

Hope soccer8, the original poster, hasn't left the thread in disgust over all our quibbling.

[ml/nj]

Hope soccer8, the original poster, hasn't left the thread in disgust over all our quibbling.

I'm not sure which meaning of quibbling you have in mind, but none that I am aware of applies here.

soccer8 specifically said he didn't want revisionist trash. You made a recommendation, and what you recommended would certainly qualify as revisionist trash in my opinion. You may not like the fact that your recommendation has been criticized, but that doesn't make that criticism a "quibble." Maybe you still "feel" that Jonhson is a good source for American history, but feelings are thin gruel for these discussions at FR.

BTW, I didn't recommend a general history because all that I have aren't much better than what one can find in the Encyclopedia Britannica, and in some ways all are worse. I think if I had to recommend one work about the United States, it would be De Tocqueville's Democracy in America. It isn't really a history. It's more of a survey; and was written around 1830 so some might think it dated. There are a bunch of translations of this work originally written in French. Follow this link to reviews of one of them at Amazon.

ML/NJ

[Grand Old Partisan]

Try "Back to Basics for the Republican Party" -- available on Amazon at www.republicanbasics.com