Customer Reviews

Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early North America (5th Edition)

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Gary Nash is one of many historians to masterfully synthesize the best of the social history produced over the previous generation, inspired largely by the social movements of the 50s, 60s and 70s. This revisionist reinterpretation has helped revolutionize our understanding of who built America, challenging the very common "great man" theory of history that claims human progress is the result of a few great minds--always wealthy and usually white males. Class struggle and racial inequality are central to American history from the colonial era through to today, and Gary Nash is part of a great generation of scholars that seek to destroy the standard myths of this country's past that say otherwise. Read this work by Gary Nash, as well as a number of his other books on race, slavery and the revolutionary era available on Amazon. Check out Ira Berlin, Alan Taylor, Barbara J. Fields, Eric Foner, and of course the late Howard Zinn for more amazing work in the various fields of radical, social, labor history as well as the terrible legacy of slavery and the genocidal treatment of indigenous Americans.

Disregard the review of December 14th, 2009. He represents the right-wing tea-bagger interpretation of history, one where wealthy ruling-class whites are the motor force of history and "progress." The right-wing has engaged in attempting to overturn the brilliant revisionist work done by Gary Nash and so many other scholars for decades. They can't stand the thought that ordinary people are central to all the gains that workers have won throughout history, by fighting their oppressors, the latter of which American history has no shortage of.

Gary Nash is one of the best social historians you can read. He writes in an engaging style, bases his synthesis on excellent research and tells the important, if often overlooked stories of average Americans. Red, White and Black is a helpful look at the developing American society which emerged from the complex intermingling of many distinct cultural groups. The clash of race and culture created a unique society in the United States.
Excellent entry into colonial history.

Got here on time for class and was a lot cheaper than the fsu bookstore!!

For anyone interested in reading this book, or anything else by Gary B. Nash- please consider that these are the works of a revisionist, apologist, and anti-American "historian". I refuse to even sell back his books to my local used book store. They are simply placed in the garbage where they belong. There are so many fantastic historians out there. Don't waste your time, your money or pollute your mind.