Customer Reviews

America A to Z: People, Places, Customs, and Culture

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

 

 

As a newcomer to America there's lots of trivia I don't know about but am exposed to every day, so anything which lists the things Americans take for granted is useful. This book is amusing and a bit informative, though the subjects are in the main so well known that there's nothing new to be learned.

By its very nature this has to be a light book with brief one paragraph descriptions for most things, so sometimes an item which is worth more detail or possibly a book of its own is under represented.

All in all it's like reading the small filler articles in a magazine (it's published by Readers Digest), interesting to spend a couple of minutes dipping into but nothing you'd read from cover to cover or use as a reference book.

Of course it would be impossible, in a book of this size, to go into much real depth about any of the subjects covered, but it's at least enough to pique your interest about them. It might almost have been titled "American Icons," because that's what it lists. The 993 entries range from beloved foods (cheeseburgers, hot dogs, ice cream, cold cereals) through heroes of history (Washington, Lincoln, Lee, the Mercury Seven astronauts, Davy Crockett), writers (Hawthorne, Hemingway, Faulkner, Emerson, Thoreau), performers (John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Bette Davis, the Grateful Dead, Woody Guthrie), places (Death Valley, Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon), artists (the Hudson River School, holidays (Halloween, Christmas, July 4), inventors (Edison, Henry Ford), magazines (Mad, Ladies' Home Journal, Readers' Digest), fictional characters, films, TV series, books, and assorted other categories to terms like "Yankee" and "the Roaring '20's." Profusely illustrated and written in RD's trademark brisk, readable prose, it's a treasure house of people, places, customs, and things that have contributed to making the United States what it is. There are a few errors which might have been caught had the proofreaders been more alert (a mention of "President Theodore Roosevelt" during the Spanish-American War, a caption that describes a picture of John Wayne as of his role in The Searchers (John Wayne Collection) when it's really from El Dorado, and the like). It's rather heavily weighted toward the 20th century, since that was when "pop culture" really came into its own, and of course, as in any similar listing, you'll almost certainly find yourself thinking, "Why didn't they include this, and this, and this?" Still, it's a good beginning toward establishing just what American popular culture consists of, and will certainly evoke nostalgia in Americans of every age.

I love this book because it presents me with a better understanding and insight about the things I encounter in the American culture on a regular basis.

Great book for people like me who like books of facts, not fiction. Easy to find what you want in alphabetical order.