A History of US: Book 5: Liberty for All? 1820-1860 [Paperback]

Joy Hakim (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0195153286 | ISBN-13: 978-0195153286 | Edition: 3

Early nineteenth-century America could just about be summed up by Henry David Thoreau's words when he said, "Eastward I go only by force, but westward I go free." It was an exuberant time for the diverse citizens of the United States, who included a range of folk, from mountain men and railroad builders to whalers and farmers, as they pushed forward into the open frontier and all their hopes and fears are captured in Liberty for All? In addition to colorful accounts of the massive westward migration, the California Gold Rush, a war with Mexico, the Oregon boundary conflict, Texas and the Alamo, Liberty for All? takes a deep look at the issue that began to gnaw at the country's core: How, in the land where "all men are created equal," could there be slaves?

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 5 Up-The strengths of this series entry are a lively, engaging style; short chapters; many black-and-white illustrations; and the inclusion of lots of stories about women and minorities. Hakim's conversational storytelling style draws readers into the years from 1800 to the eve of the Civil War. Through sidebars, inserts, and the extensive use of first-hand accounts, the author lets readers experience the lives of mountain men and pioneer women, Mormons and mill workers, railroad men and stagecoach travelers. She covers traditional subjects such as the Western expansion, new inventions and developments that linked the country, the rise of manufacturing and the growth of cities, and the increasingly tense coexistence of slave-owning and free states. More depth is offered in sidebars on specific individuals and events such as the Amistad rebellion, the growing American literary and artistic movement, Nathaniel Bowditch, the whaling trade, the women's suffrage movement, and the Underground Railroad. The narrative leads readers straight to the next volume in the series to see what happens next. The format is busy and the pages have a xeroxed look, but the print is not difficult to read. A good choice for browsers, report writers, and storytellers looking for historical anecdotes.
Sally Bates Goodroe, Houston Public Library
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"A big breath of fresh air and the best possible news for the youngsters who get to read them." -- David McCullough, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of John Adams

"The best American history written for young people that I have ever seen." -- David Herbert Donald, Harvard University, two-time Pulitzer-prize winning author of Lincoln --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9 and up
  
• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 3 edition (September 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195153286
• ISBN-13: 978-0195153286
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,240,471 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I started my career as an author with a ten-volume U.S. history: A History of US, published by Oxford University Press in 1993, and now in a third updated printing. I had no idea the history would end up in ten books, or that it would be so much fun to write.
A History of US has been awarded a bunch of prizes. David McCullough commented, ". . .the idea that history might ever be thought of as a chore has clearly never crossed her mind." In testimony before the Senate Education Committee he called the series "superb." People Magazine described me as "the J.K. Rowling of the history world." (Umm, that would be nice. But the books have sold 5 million copies.)
Mine are narrative history books that attempt to set literary standards. I mean for them to be exciting to read. They're meant for young readers, and their teachers and parents, or for anyone without a deep background in U.S. history. These are books that can be found in bookstores, on Amazon, and in schools. Oxford and Hopkins have done teaching materials for those who want to use the books in academic study.
That series was followed by: Freedom: A History of US (published in 2003), the companion to a 16-part PBS series of the same name that was narrated by Katie Couric, with voices by a host of Hollywood figures, from Tom Hanks to Robin Williams. The videos are available to schools from PBS. And the book spawned a terrific website: (www.pbs.org/wnet/historyofus).

I'm now writing The Story of Science. The first three books are jointly published by Smithsonian Books and the NSTA (National Science Teachers Association). They focus on the quest to understand the universe--from ancient Greece to today's expanding universe. The first volume is Aristotle Leads the Way; the second, Newton at the Center; the third book, Einstein Adds A New Dimension, attempts to explain quantum theory and relativity with black holes and space travel too. Writing in the New York Times, Natalie Angier called the books, "richly informative." Alan Alda raved. These books have won prizes too. Science writer Timothy Ferris said he wished he had them when he was a boy. Educators at Johns Hopkins and NSTA have developing coordinated teaching materials for classroom use (available from NSTA or Amazon).

I'm currently working on two books that put biology into a narrative framework.

Before I began writing books, I was an associate editor, editorial writer, and business writer for The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk's morning paper) and a general reporter and photographer on the staff of The Ledger-Star (Norfolk's afternoon paper. I did a whole lot of freelance writing while raising three kids. And I was an assistant editor of World News, a foreign news service at McGraw-Hill.

Writing and teaching seem to be two faces of the same need to explain things. Which may explain why I've had dual careers--as writer and teacher.

I've taught elementary school (Omaha, NE), high school English (Virginia Beach, VA), special education in a middle school (Syracuse, NY), and English composition and American literature at a community college (Virginia Beach). I initiated and taught a writing course for high school teachers of English through the University of Virginia.

I do a lot of speaking, especially to education groups. For three years I worked with a group of history teachers in Los Angeles under a TAH (Teaching American History) grant. I've spent some of my time in an inner-city school where most of the students speak Spanish at home and reading English doesn't come easily. I'll be speaking at Teachers College, Columbia in the fall of 2009 where reading guru, Lucy Calkins, has called my books the "gold standard" in the field.

As to my schooling: I earned a B.A. from Smith College after high school in Rutland, Vermont. Then I received a M.Ed. and an honorary doctorate from Goucher College. Smith gave me the Smith Medal (2000); the Matrix Foundation, the Edith Workman Award (2003); I've taken graduate courses in journalism and in geography at New York University, child psychology at Johns Hopkins, and courses in American history and science at Brown, Harvard, Cornell, and Cambridge University. My website is: joyhakim.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The United States expands as it moves towards Civil War, August 2, 2003

By 

Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: A History of US: Book 5: Liberty for All? 1820-1860 (Paperback)

"Liberty for All? 1820-1860" is the fifth volume in Joy Hakim's "A History of US," and focuses on the question of how slavery could exist in the land of the free. While this book clearly sets up the next volume, "War, Terrible War 1855-1865," which covers the Civil War, it also has some significant overlap with the previous volume, "The New Nation 1780-1850," which ends with the Compromise of 1850 that put off the coming war for a decade. There is not a neat and simple way of dividing up American history when covering the first half of the 19th-century, so it is not like there is an obvious solution to Hakim's problems of deciding where to end one book and begin the next.

Whereas "The New Nation" looks primarily at the on going political experiment that saw the creation of parties and the peaceful transition from Federalists to Democratic-Republicans, "Liberty for All?" is more about the slavery question in the context of the young nation's expanasion. The volume begins with the story of Westward expansion along the Sante Fe trail and other routes and ends with the story of the Underground Railroad. In between Hakim tells young readers about Mormons moving to Utah, Texas joining the Union, and gold being discovered in California. Opening up Japan to American trade and the Seneca Falls conference on the Rights of Women are also part of this period of American history.

This volume covers a lot of different topics from this time period. "The New Nation" has a much clearer sense of structure because it follows the administrations of the first presidents, but I think you can see four significant units in this book. The first (Chapters 1-20) deals with all the myriad aspects of western expansion, from the Mississippi to the west coast and beyond to Japan. The second (Chapters 21-26) focuses on the conditions faced by women and children during this time. The third (Chapters 27-31) focuses on the impact of the transcendentalists on philosophy and literature, from Thoreau and Melville to Whitman and Dickinson (including some choice poems) as well as Aubudon and Caitlin. The final section (Chatpers 32-38) is rather powerful dealing with the "Amistad" case, the Compromise of 1850, Stephen Douglas's "popular sovereignty" solution, the Dred Scott decision, and the idea that the entire issue of slavery was coming to head.

These books are all richly illustrated, almost exclusively with historic paintings, etching, drawings, cartoons, and the like. The margins are cramed with mini-biographies, definitions, lines of poetry, and suggestions for places where young readers can find more information about a topic. This series has a deserved reputation among parents who are home schooling their children because not only is it very informative, but Hakim makes a concerted effort to engage her young readers. She is constantly asking them to put themselves in the perspective of the people being written about, whether they are pioneers heading over the Rocky Mountains or slaves trying to find their way North to freedom. More importantly, Hakim has an innate ability to anticipate questions from her readers; you can count on her to explain "why" at the point where a student in class would be raising their hand to ask that very question.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Series, April 23, 2003

By 

Bugaboo "warroon" (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: A History of US: Book 5: Liberty for All? 1820-1860 (Paperback)

I bought this series for my wife so she could better understand the history of the US and improve her English language skills in an area of intense interest for her. In the end, I pored over these books and gave my wife little time with them. Written for kids but fabulous for adults with little time. Buy the index and you can find sources if you're interested in diving a little deeper on a particular topic. I hope to keep these books for out future child(ren?) and am sure they will find them intriguing. The series lets us know how magnificent a country we really live in and how dramatic the history really is. With all the turmoil and all the diversity, how do we manage to keep it together? And, there are plenty who take umbrage at the extensive coverage of race and gender equality but they really are at the root of so many of our societal problems, historically speaking.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The United States expands as it moves towards Civil War, August 2, 2003

By 

Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: A History of US: Book 5: Liberty for All? (1800-1860) (Paperback)

"Liberty for All? 1820-1860" is the fifth volume in Joy Hakim's "A History of US," and focuses on the question of how slavery could exist in the land of the free. While this book clearly sets up the next volume, "War, Terrible War 1855-1865," which covers the Civil War, it also has some significant overlap with the previous volume, "The New Nation 1780-1850," which ends with the Compromise of 1850 that put off the coming war for a decade. There is not a neat and simple way of dividing up American history when covering the first half of the 19th-century, so it is not like there is an obvious solution to Hakim's problems of deciding where to end one book and begin the next.

Whereas "The New Nation" looks primarily at the on going political experiment that saw the creation of parties and the peaceful transition from Federalists to Democratic-Republicans, "Liberty for All?" is more about the slavery question in the context of the young nation's expansion. The volume begins with the story of Westward expansion along the Santa Fe Trail and other routes and ends with the story of the Underground Railroad. In between Hakim tells young readers about Mormons moving to Utah, Texas joining the Union, and gold being discovered in California. Opening up Japan to American trade and the Seneca Falls conference on the Rights of Women are also part of this period of American history.

This volume covers a lot of different topics from this time period. "The New Nation" has a much clearer sense of structure because it follows the administrations of the first presidents, but I think you can see four significant units in this book. The first (Chapters 1-20) deals with all the myriad aspects of western expansion, from the Mississippi to the west coast and beyond to Japan. The second (Chapters 21-26) focuses on the conditions faced by women and children during this time. The third (Chapters 27-31) focuses on the impact of the transcendentalists on philosophy and literature, from Thoreau and Melville to Whitman and Dickinson (including some choice poems) as well as Audubon and Caitlin. The final section (Chapters 32-38) is rather powerful dealing with the "Amistad" case, the Compromise of 1850, Stephen Douglas's "popular sovereignty" solution, the Dred Scott decision, and the idea that the entire issue of slavery was coming to head.

These books are all richly illustrated, almost exclusively with historic paintings, etching, drawings, cartoons, and the like. The margins are crammed with mini-biographies, definitions, lines of poetry, and suggestions for places where young readers can find more information about a topic. This series has a deserved reputation among parents who are home schooling their children because not only is it very informative, but Hakim makes a concerted effort to engage her young readers. She is constantly asking them to put themselves in the perspective of the people being written about, whether they are pioneers heading over the Rocky Mountains or slaves trying to find their way North to freedom. More importantly, Hakim has an innate ability to anticipate questions from her readers; you can count on her to explain "why" at the point where a student in class would be raising their hand to ask that very question.