The Americans [Hardcover]

Gerald A. Danzer (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0618377166 | ISBN-13: 978-0618377169 | Publication Date: January 31, 2004 | Edition: Florida

The Americans (View amazon detail page) ASIN: 0618377166

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1123 pages
• Publisher: Mcdougal Littell/Houghton Mifflin; Florida edition (January 31, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618377166
• ISBN-13: 978-0618377169
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.6 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #479,464 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The series has its strengths and weaknesses, December 14, 2006

By 

Fernand Raynaud (California, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Americans (Hardcover)

My son has the 2006 California Edition, which tags each chapter with the paragraph and section of the specific Grade 11 California Objectives that it addresses. These Objectives focus on the development, in the student, of a sense of history as an ocean of conflicting opinions, some better substantiated than others, and how to begin sorting out distortions and oversimplifications. Although the heavy-handed political correctness we see here and there may be repulsive, and the token emphasis on minorities is silly and at times disturbing, overal the book still makes a serious effort to encourage debate and critical thinking over fact memorization. Of course, at some point, the very process of "critical thinking" can be hijacked to become nothing but lip service to thinking, in which "critique" in itself is an ideology. We pretend to think critically, but we do so in specific ways. Interestingly my son has said that his teacher does not take well to alternate explanations. Yes, McCarthyism was an insane overreaction, but it's not true that there were no Russian agents in the US. The textbook itself does try to be balanced. It could be better, but it sure beats what I had in High School.