Customer Reviews

America, Empire of Liberty: A New History of the United States

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The chief selling point of this book is that it is a one volume history of the United States using three themes, empire, liberty and faith. Except it doesn't. The true themes of this book are the levels of rights and powers between the State Governments, the Federal Government, and the Supreme Court. Faith is a topic discussed in its own sections of a chapter. 'Empire' and 'liberty' are terms frequently invoked at the beginning and end of chapters, but rarely are they put in context.

The book is divided into three sections. The first starts in the distant past with the arrival of prehistoric humans, and winds down to the beginning of the Civil War. The second continues with the Civil War through to the end of World War II. These sections are an interesting but conventional and conservative overview of US history. To anyone familiar with American history, there should be few surprises here, except some of the author's conservative spin on events. For instance, he takes a consistently negative and 'interfering' view of the decisions of the Supreme Court.

The third section of the book is set from after World War II right up to the Obama Presidency. I found this section the most memorable but also the most frustrating. Apart from a chapter on the civil rights movement of the Sixties and a section on the Information Revolution, this section is a series of shallow biographies of the US presidential administrations. It covers what they intended to do, and what standard histories say they achieved. American events not involving the Presidents are not covered. Apart from Watergate, scandals are only mentioned, not truly covered. This section is also where the author's viewpoint goes from just conservative to aggressively imperial. He lightly covers criticism of the checks and balances governing system with claims that the Constitution is too antiquated for the twentieth century. Then, at the end of the chapter on Nixon (of all Presidents), he literally insults the American people as a whole for not granting the Presidency unlimited power with which to rule their (government's) global empire.

What good points, then, does this book have? The author does a very good job of showing how the American system evolved from strong states' rights and weak central government, to a powerful central government and a citizenry with strong individual rights (when that central government is willing to enforce those rights). Also, despite what he directly states, he does a good job showing how the Supreme Court has been responsible for establishing and defending those individual rights. The author is also a good writer. The quality of the writing made the book enjoyable, or at least readable, no matter how much I disagreed with the author's viewpoint. Finally, while the author deals only briefly with the Founding Fathers' separation of Church and State, he uses some brilliant quotes to make the truth of that separation crystal clear.

It is hard to summarise this book. Overall, it is highly readable and informative in surprising ways. The chapters up to World War II are a good overview of American historical trends. However, the author's viewpoint is conservative, and in the post-war chapters, the overview of events becomes too shallow and too focused on just the Presidency.

Those who are well read students in the history of the Republic won't find much new in this single volume overview, but it serves its purpose as such: a single volume for readers needing a refresher on the nation's history; and younger people who would be better served by a readable, near-comprehensive narrative history than some of the history books written now focusing more on social analysis, etc. than the story.

This is an excellent narrative overview of American history from the beginnings to late 2008. The author covers a lot of ground but gives more emphasis to the 20th century as major events and cultural movements then shaped America today. He weaves his narrative together with three themes: empire, liberty and faith. The book explores how the American people shaped their story and confronted the paradoxes inherent in these three themes.

As the author admitted, this is written from an outsider's perspective. While the book does cover native americans, sexual revolution, civil rights, etc., it does not pay homage to the liberal agenda. Some reviewers complain that this constitutes a bias towards "landed white guys". Actually this is part of the outsider's perspective. The narrative of American history has been dominated by the liberal establishment since the culture wars of the 1990s. I find it refreshing to read a history book that actually focuses on history rather than political correctness.

This very rapid and not particularly insightful trip through our nation's history seems to be a story without a theme. There is much to anticipate in this book. The author is British and teaches history at Cambridge. He also has won the prestigious Wolfson prize, awarded annually for the best history book in the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, this book tackles a huge, complex subject, the broad sweep of American history, and recites events familiar to the casual student of our history without any novel insights or themes. The Revolution is dismissed in four pages, the Civil War in ten, World War I is hardly discussed and the victory is awarded to the British forces, stalemated until the American Expeditionary Forces were injected into the War in 1917, and World War II is finished in five pages. It is difficult, indeed, to say anything meaningful or novel about these monumental pivot points in American history in such a short space. I am all for brevity but this is brevity brought to the border of superficiality.

History written to illuminate a particular theme can be absorbing and challenging. Frequently, it can shape new ideas about what were previously known facts. This is what I had expected from this book but there is little of this here. We know that Americans are religious, hard-working, lovers of liberty, and relatively young. Each of these is discussed briefly without any new conclusions.

But our tour guide presents a breezy and fast-moving review of American history. I had been looking for something more than a review: I wanted fresh insights and a different slant. Sadly, America, Empire of Liberty disappoints in this.

Contrary to some of the other reviews written here I found the book fairly balanced. Obviously, many interesting things are glossed over and others omitted, but that is to be expected from a single volume covering the whole history of the USA. Overall a very good read.

Before I finished book I knew very little about USA history limited by my school education in former Soviet Union times. Now I feel more confident and plan to read 4 volumes of Oxford History of the United States and 16 volumes of History of America and not being overwhelmed by details. I'm also reading 3 volumes of The Cambridge History of the Cold War 3 Volume Hardback Set and the book provided missing context for the first volume. As a researcher of a history of Russian revolutions I firmly believe that in order to understand a history of my own country it is beneficial to read about other countries. Then discerned historical patterns and insights can be applied to a different narrative.

The book also has an overview of historical literature at the back which might be useful if you are interested in further pursuing special topics. Additionally the book provides the great overview of background historical material needed to understand modern cyber conflicts.

In conclusion, I must say I'd never thought before that US history was so interesting.

I like David Reynolds' writing style. It is fluid, transitions well into the next topic, and is void of meaningless English. And this is quite ironic, because Reynolds writes this book from an Englishman's perspective. That alone makes this an interesting read.

But that also is the flaw of this book. As he writes in the introduction (xi) "This is also the view of an outsider, which has both disadvantages and benefits. Disadvantages, in that there will be specifics that I don't properly appreciate, detail that I haven't properly grasped." No words in this book ring more true.

My complaint with the contents of this book is that there are too many important events left out of this work. There is no mention of Lewis and Clark, and other than the first chapter "Natives and Europeans" there is no mention of the Indian Wars (!!!) that increased after the Civil War. Geronimo is not in the index, and you won't find any Native American tribe in the index, either.

How can you write about American History, even in a condensed manner, and not even mention the struggles of the Native Americans? They were the direct victims of America's Empire of Liberty! If this omission was an Englishman's perspective, it makes for an interesting perspective indeed, but it's a gross omission in the overall context of American History as Native Americans were there from start to finish in the building of the United States.

But, overall the read, as mentioned, is fluid. Although not one chapter is overly detailed, I enjoyed the chapter entitled "Capital and Labor." For someone who wants a decent overview of American History (especially someone with no interest in our Native Americans), then this is a decent read. For a historian or someone with specialized knowledge in American history, this book may not reveal anything new and may only be worthy of critical analysis.

Not all is lost, though. The 478 pages of text summarize our major historical events rather well, and perhaps here and there one will come up with a new quote dug up by one of our American writers to describe tidbits of our history. But one can also pick up a college freshmen textbook on American history and get a more rounder and just as superficial survey of American History as this book. (And college textbooks come with colorful photos, maps and replicas of primary documents!)

I don't want to sound as if this is a bad book; it's not. The writing style pulls this from a potential 3-star review to a 4-star review. Reynolds makes his angle of American history clear in his introduction. His detailed list of "Suggestions for Further Reading" make up a big gap of history for those wanting more details of certain events, or more details of events already described in this book. It's clear that he knows American History well. What's also clear is what he as an Englishman finds more exciting, more interesting or more pivitol to our current position in the global world. As he writes on page 478, "...the empire forged by antiimperialists, the land of liberty that rested on slavery, the secular state energized by godly ambition," his focus on American history rested on these three areas.

Having said all that, I think he should take this book and revise it, and then publish it as "American History as seen by the Eyes of an Englishman." I would certainly read that, as there are always two parts to every history: Ours and Theirs.

David Reynolds has done a fine job here with his radio 4 broadcasts, now turned into a CD, on America, Empire of Liberty. He draws on a wide range of learning and personal experience to synthesize the fascinating and rich history of America into digestible, bite size chunks of 13-14 minutes apiece. The sequence is broadly chronological, each episode covering a key thematic or episodic component of America's history, covering a wide range of themes: from the breakaway colonies in the 18th Century, to puncturing some of the national myths about the Founding Fathers, slavery, the frontier battles, Civil War, and development of government and economics, much is covered here about the American past.

The tone is like that of an experienced schoolmaster - complex themes made accessible, without seeming facile or dumbed down. Even those readers (or listeners in this case) with a relatively deep knowledge of American history are likely to glean something new and thought provoking here.

I have used several episodes in my history classes, to good effect, and I recommend this CD.

An exaggerated title no doubt, but reading the first reviewer, a necessary counterpoint, since he gives the impression that it's Howard Zinn redux. Up to the election of Kennedy, I thought it was relatively fair to left and right perspectives, but thereafter, the writer's conservative biases became more pronounced. The sixties assassinations of King and RFK were blamed on lone nuts (maybe they were, but it gave no hint that there may have been a conspiracy). There's nothing about the illegal bombing of Cambodia; nothing about Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, torture. Evidently Nixon ran against no one in 1972--the word 'McGovern' never comes up. The Pentagon Papers case is missing, along with the break-in of Ellsberg's shrink, and all the other dirty tricks. The 2000 election says nothing about the deliberate suppression of the black vote in Florida. There's nothing about whether our govt. had advance knowledge of 9/11, let alone whether it was an inside job. The counterculture is encapsulated within a brief description of the suppression of the Yippies at the 1968 Democratic convention (as a bunch of lewd, spoiled crazies). The discussion of Tonkin Gulf gives no hint that it was manufactured by the Johnson Administration as a pretext for bombing North Vietnam. Despite these omissions, I enjoyed the book and the author does an admirable job in making his point that America's history is indeed the story of the rocky expansion of liberty when viewed through a 400 year lens.

Horribly biased. One would conclude from this book that only landed, wealthy, white men benefited from our Empire of Liberty. Well, um, that's the way the world was 300 years ago. I guess we've come a long way, but, according to this author, that would be due to the white guys going down to all your usual victim-like minorities who bravely triumphed in the end. Classic revisionist history. (Actually, I had meant to purchase "Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (Oxford History of the United States) (Hardcover)", but I got the wrong book by mistake.) (I guess we landed white guys are just that stupid) :-)