Customer Reviews

The Penguin History of the USA: New edition

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

you could not do better than Hugh Brogan's. Not only is it immensely readable (and yes, funny) but, contrary to the comments of other reviewers, his outsider's perspective makes this book even more valuable to American readers. His balanced analysis of critical episodes in American history and their relation to broader trends in world history gives the reader a sense of the interdependency of historical development, something all too often absent from American textbooks. Most importantly, his passionate, though never craven, defence of European Enlightenment thinking, so critical in shaping the essence of American political thought and the philosophical underpinnings of its constitutional framework, is essential if one is to truly grasp the causal factors behind the world's first anti-colonial revolution. There can be no doubt, regardless of the temptation to view the period and its ideas through post-modern eyes, the political figures of the time, whether Tory or Whig, Loyalist or Rebel believed in their respective ideas. A failure to understand this simple fact results in a fundamental failure to grasp the great themes of the 18th century and those that have followed. Hugh Brogan's work should be celebrated wherever free people value what truly makes them free.

Packed with diverting insights and miscellaneous facts, this general history of the US is notable for its sweep, its sensibility and erudition. If you feel the need to understand the various periods in American, the central economic and political factors which drive the continuity and change from one period to another, this shortened history does an excellent job.

A couple of interesting facts: Tammany Hall was named after the Indian chief Tammany, who gave William Penn land to start his colony. Tammany gave Penn all the land he could walk in three days. Penn stopped after a day and a half and thanked Tammany for his generosity. But the next generation of Pennsylvanians organized a relay race and grabbed as much land as they could in the day and half that follwed. And the work bunk, or bunkum comes from a representative from South Carolina, who in the House of Representatives, delivered a long speech dealing only with local concerns, boring his fellows politicos. He apologized later, saying that the speech was intended only for "Buncum County."

Brogan is particularly adept at drawing incisive portraits of American presidents and leaders. Abraham Lincoln, who may be the most written about American President, is here given new life by Brogan as a man who was a sharp politician, ambitious, steeped in the give and take of democracy -- a side of Lincoln sometimes overlooked in oher biographies. His portraits of Carter, Nixon and Reagan are also insightful.

Great reading for the average reader and the history enthusiast and scholar as well. The average reader will appreciate the grace and insight with which he tells the big story, the history enthusiast and scholar will appreciate the odd details, and Brogran's often tangy slant on America and Americans

Brogan's history of the U.S. is well-written and, on the whole, well-researched. I am considering the use of the book in a classroom setting because I am dissatisfied with another English historian's factual innacuracies in an otherwise good book. Brogan, too, makes some factual mistakes that irritate me. For example, he presents Gettysburg as a two-day battle when it was a three-day battle. His mistakes are much less glaring than are Paul Johnson's in his one volume history of the United States, but they are enough to make one ask why English historians writing about American history are too proud to ask an American historian to at least check facts for them before publishing.

Despite this, I rated the book at five stars (although I would have rated it at four-and-a-half stars if I could figure out how).

I gave this book 4 stars because it is an excellent single volume book of United States history. I'll let others criticize the content, I want to focus on the formatting and spelling issues.

Publishers like Penguin and Bantam are starting to move into the ebook market, and this is a good thing. There's no shortage of classics being dumped into the market place by amateurs looking to make a quick dollar. These books are either quickly packaged volumes from free digital libraries, or scanned from library volumes, and given a quick massage.

What is so frustrating is that publishers like Penguin are rushing some of their books to market with very little in the way of proof reading. This book is a prime example of that. For example, the year 1860 always appears as i860. There are inexplicable page breaks and juxtapositions of words. This book also frequently quotes passages from source documents. The quoted passages appear in the same exact font as the main text does. This can be a source of confusion.

Honestly, I don't think the digital version of this book was proof-read at all.

Penguin is going to have to get its act together, or they will find it very hard to sell much of their catalog in the new ebook marketplace. I still recommend this book, because there is a paucity of single volume United States histories available for the Kindle at this time. Still, it has its maddening moments, and it makes one cautious about buying other ebooks from Penguin, when you can buy nearly free ebooks of the same titles (that in some cases are more carefully edited than the ebooks Penguin is putting out).

Having read the existing reviews, I have little to add except that this book delivers quite a few details that are all too seldom mentioned, some of which are quite ironic. For example, I believe I have only read in one other text, and had almost forgotten, that the British parliament revoked the Charter of Massachusetts Bay Colony because of it's tendency to rather savage persecution of Christians of other denominations, most especially Quakers. The irony of this, given that it was the governor of that colony who bequeathed to us the image, made popular by Ronald Reagan, of the "shining city on the hill" is quite powerful. Brogan, to his credit, doesn't attempt to draw such conclusions. But, perhaps because he isn't an American, he is able to lay out such jarring details in a neutral and unslanted manner.

The idea of explaining American history in about 700 pages certainly is ambitious. I have to take my hat of to Hugh Brogan for even trying. On the whole, he manges to do a reasonable job of it. If you're like me and you feel that your school district let you down when it set out to teach you about your own history, give this book a try.

He brings a unique perspective in reviewing American history as a Briton. Not being a product of American society and not having grown up with all of the ingrained myths that we have about our own country, he's able to bring some important objectivity.

On certain topics, the book is necessarily brief. However, Brogan manages to hit the themes that are overarching in American history, such as the struggle of African Americans and the European relationship (or lack thereof) to Native Americans.

As a small aside, I was stunned by the fact that he never even mentions the fact that Americans placed the first humans on the moon. I don't see how he could cover Vietnam and Watergate in detial while ignoring this parallel story.

I must admit, I am only moderately impressed with Hugh Brogan's "The Penguin History of the USA". It is written well enough, as befits a distinguished British scholar, but it is marred by excessive editorializing, to the detriment of what one would expect of an informative and unbiased historical text. It is highly informative, even if the presentation feels at times chaotic, but it is emphatically not unbiased.

Looking at more technical aspects: numerous quotations are presented without references; value laden pronouncements are derived from some historical fact or other, or a number, but where these come from is seldom explained; neither it is discussed how representative they might be; whole pages of editorializing are interleaved with more factual portions of the text, but without a clear demarcation; the presentation rambles on in parts.

It is a jolly good read nevertheless: not an easy text to follow, and not a text from which to learn about the US history, sic, more like a long-winded polemic.

Incidentally, the disastrous winter of 1886/7, which is mentioned on page 422, and the drought that followed, may have been long term effects of the Krakatoa eruption of three years earlier. It was followed by chaotic weather patterns and global cooling that did not alleviate until 1888, cf. Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 by Simon Winchester, so the statement on the following page, "The farmers' wounds were in large part self-inflicted, and they ought to have known better..." sounds rather flippant.

An even more calamitous volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora, the largest since AD 181, happened in April 1815, and produced a disastrous "year without summer" in 1816. This then triggered a massive migration of New England farmers to the Upper Midwest mentioned on page 231, but without a reference to climatic conditions at the time, cf. Volcano Weather: The Story of 1816, the Year Without a Summer by Henry and Elizabeth Stommel.

I did a fair amount of research on history books and finally bought this one because of the great product reviews it had. Boy was I disappointed when it arrived. The language it is written in is dull and hard to understand. I found myself Googling half of the events the author discussed because his analysis was too complex. This book is NOT for the average reader looking to learn a little more about the history of the greatest country in the world.

This is a solid survey of American history told in engaging prose. I agree with the other positive reviews.

ONE BIG CAVEAT: If you already possess Brogan's earlier surveys, the Longman History of USA (1985) or the Pelican History of the USA (1986), this is essentially the same book with a little updating for the 1980s.

The epitome of a thoughtful work for a non-specialist audience. Wise, witty, ironic, sophisticated, and extremely well-written.