2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
As a personal favor to yourself, I recommend that you not buy this book., October 29, 2011
I can be a very silly person.
At the moment, I am living abroad and thus in rather high reliance on the Amazon ebook collection. A truckload of paper to ship home would be an unwelcome burden, so I load up on Kindle books, a library that's significantly easier to tote around. This means that when I'm wanting to read a history of the Bank of the United States, I have to make do with the selection available to me.
Right now, this book is the second hit in the Kindle store when you enter the bank's name, and the only direct hit available. As of October, 2011, they're selling the ebook version for 89 bucks. Well, well. Not a book priced for popular consumption, but this isn't a terribly uncommon price for a genuine work of research, the dusty technical history, the sort written by tweed-wearing professors with more hair coming out their ears than still on their heads. I'm okay with a technical work, so I hit the button and coughed up the electronic cash for this electronic book.
What I failed to do was any research about what this book is. There was one utterly useless review already, no information whatever, just as likely to be written by the author's well-meaning mother than by a person who has actually cracked open the book and plowed in. But what the hey? There are not yet any other books available in the online store on the subject, and how bad could it be, anyway?
Sigh.
This is not, in fact, a dry but diligent work of deep scholarship about the First and Second Banks of the United States. It more closely resembles a collection of college freshman essays. This is not to say that the book is uninformative. The author does competent work paraphrasing the views of actual historians. But that's the entirety of this book: a paraphrase. It offers no in-depth economic analysis, no strong familiarity with original sources, and not the slightest hint of any originality. The author relies heavily -- not quite to the point of exclusivity but close enough -- on secondary sources. The author read a bunch of other history books, and then re-wrote what already existed.
To give an example, 15 of the 56 references for chapter 3 are to Raymond Walter's article "The Origins of the Second Bank of the United States" in the _Journal of Political Economy_. That includes the entire run of citations 46 to 56. Eleven citations in a row, 10 ibids back to back, not to a real document from history but to a single secondary source journal article. Woof.
Like I said, I am a silly person. There are warnings about this to anyone who takes the time to google this book before purchasing.
This kind of reliance on secondary sources is perfectly fine for a consumer-priced piece of pop history. Popularizers should make up in style what they lack in original research. But this book, all dressed up as a serious work, does not deliver. The prose style alternates between soporific and soulless, which is unacceptable in a work as expensive as this, which is nothing more than a redressing of other people's hard work and scholarship.
Save your money. Don't be silly like I was.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Intriguing and Enlightening, February 1, 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: The Bank of the United States and the American Economy: (Contributions in Economics and Economic History) (Hardcover)
A great read for anyone with an interest in the history of the Bank of the US, or for US history buffs in general. Kaplan explores not only the patterns and general themes of the Bank's development and demise, but also some of the finer points of its history that add character to this intriguing story.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
