Customer Reviews

Mapping America's Past: A Historical Atlas (Henry Holt Reference Book)

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A highly satisfying review of historical topics.I'm often able to read only in 20-minute bites; every spread of this book is a self-contained history lesson, accessible in 20 minutes but worth revisiting many times. Most important topics and events of American history are covered well, and the rendering of complex information (e.g. the six gauges of railroad in 1850 and how this incompatablity affected commerce, population and political power) is truly inspired. This is a superb gift for an American history buff.

Mapping America's Past is an attempt at using maps to portray American social, economic, military, and political development. The maps that are included are excellent, but what was included is somewhat puzzling. The general analysis of wars, expansion, and elections are useful, but maps of political party development in the Cleveland area or prostitution in New York City are not entirely relevant to the general American history student. Similarly, many of the accompanying texts offer little detailed insight into the topics the maps cover.

This book should be considered a general resource, but for an in-depth historical atlas, the reader must look elsewhere.

Finally, a historical atlas with the imagination to look beyond the requisite but unilluminating maps of wars, battles, and westward expansion to the rich territory of social history. Urban sprawl and white flight, ethnic politics, prostitution, the death penalty, segregation, civil rights, and many others all put in an appearance here. Some of the maps, while seemingly provincial in their coverage (WPA projects in Erie, PA, for example) are effectively used to illustrate broader points about the geography of American history. My only complaint is that in quite a few places, some sloppy editing (mistaken keys, mismarked captions, etc.) has marred the otherwise excellent cartography.

Rarely have I seen a better example of intellectual elites' skewing data to advance a political view--in this case, the loathing of America. Everything the authors could get their hands on, from early settlement, to the causes of the Civil War, to the continued exploitation of differences in American society today, is used to give the impression that America was founded upon hate and injustice, and has prospered only by the exaltation of vice and the plunder of the weak. If there is an example of goodness and virtue that resulted from the American experiment in freedom, I can't find it in this book. Pity Carnes, Garraty, and Williams.

History most usually is told by one side, and taught by another side. Book was a gift to immigrants from South Africa.