Customer Reviews

A Short History of the United States

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Oh dear: I bought Remini's book yesterday with some anticipation. As a high school teacher of U. S. history, I have, for many years, pursued the Holy Grail: the Ideal American History Survey Text. I would love to give my students a comprehensive, modern, and accurate book that is enjoyable to read. There are some good texts out there, but one always hopes that somebody, somewhere will come out a refreshing and new version of the survey that will engage student readers in an intelligent way. So I wondered, would Remini's short history do the trick?
Alas, the book disappointed in just the first couple of pages. The style was smooth and readable, but factual errors appeared almost from start. What editor could not catch Remini's mistaken description of the astrolabe, used by early seagoing explorers, as a device to "determine the longitude of their ships at sea," when it was only used for finding latitude? (seagoing exploration and commerce were woefully limited by navigators' inability to calculate longitude until well into the Eighteenth Century, and most historians usually have a clue about that fact). And poor old Columbus landed on "Watling's" island, which I guess Remini meant to be Watling Island.
Okay: picky, picky stuff. But I can't give my students a book full of little inaccuracies. Other reviewers have noted other factual errors in Remini's book as well, some of them much more significant than the ones I've mentioned here. The errors indicate a degree of carelessness, either in the book's writing or its editing. My students just can not be given such work to learn from.
I have deeply appreciated and admired Robert Remini's work, especially his superb histories of the Jacksonian period. But "Short History of the United States" is not up to his high standard. In history, as he knows, the little things really do count.

The author is apparently the official historian of the U.S. House of Representatives - and it shows. Although wars and inventions and such are reported, this book is primarily a history of the U.S. government with an emphasis on Congress. As the book progresses, time moves slower and the final 100 pages cover just 1941-2008. Also, Remini becomes more harshly critical of presidents from LBJ on, which adds to the length of later chapters. // Maps, which are normally helpful in history books, are small-scale in this book, and some are poorly placed. A map of "1803-1807 Western Explorations" is placed before the Declaration of Independence. The 1810 map is placed three pages before the 1800 map. // A few misconceptions common to high school texts are included: The Hessians were sleeping off a Christmas celebration when attacked at Trenton, an unlikely 4,000 Cherokee died on the Trail of Tears, and giving Panama ownership and control of the Panama Canal was a "success" in foreign affairs. // The book has a fair number of typos and questionable sentences. It also has a few outright contradictions: LBJ's domino effect didn't occur although one paragraph later Cambodia fell to Communism, and "Reagan inherited an economy crippled" while one page later Reagan's policies caused the economy to be "in decline." // More blatant errors include the Confederacy adopting a Constitution on Feb.8 (instead of Feb.4) 1861 and the Confederacy moving its capital from Atlanta (instead of Birmingham) to Richmond after Virginia seceded. // I recommend this book to politicians who want to read a politically correct review of the history of the U.S. government.

Robert Remini is a great history writer, having written the definitive biographies of not only Andrew Jackson but Daniel Webster and Henry Clay as well. Although his expertise is with the Jacksonian era, he is well-versed in the rest of U.S. history as well, something that was demonstrated in his history of the House of Representatives. Now, he uses his broader field of knowledge again with A Short History of the United States.

Consider all the volumes of books on the Civil War alone, with even many focusing on a single battle. It's obvious that there is a lot to say about American History, and to capture it all in less than 350 pages of text isn't easy. Of course, this means glossing over a lot of things, but Remini does a good job at capturing many of the key points.

Everything you probably remember from your high school History class is here, from the original Indian settlers to Columbus, the Pilgrims, the Revolution, the Civil War, WWI, the Great Depression, WWII and the Cold War. The book concludes at the beginning of 2008, so the McCain-Obama race isn't mentioned.

For the most part, Remini keeps things objective, but there are bits of commentary here and there, particularly as he starts discussing more recent times. Certainly, the faults of recent presidents are discussed, and it's evident that Remini leans more heavily against the Republicans. Is this bias, or do the facts merit this? Each reader will make his own decision, based on his own political leanings.

A Short History of the United States is well-written; Remini is too good to write a bad book, though this is not his best work. It serves its purpose well, however, giving the reader a solid overview of American History and a context in which to place more event-specific or person-specific reads.

In the past I have been a great fan of Prof. Remini. This book has been a great disaster. The description of late 20th century America is very partisan: Democrats are occasionally misguided but good; Republicans are evil and corrupt. In spite of what prof Remini thinks, the American military was not defeated in the Tet Offensive; the influence of the anti-war movement and their role in ending the war and their responsibility for its aftermath is not dealt with. The author fails to point out that the Patriot Act was voted with enormous bi-partisan support in Congress. His description of the Guantanamo "suspects" is worded as to make it sound as if these "suspects" were picked up off the streets of America. He also blames the Mideast Wars and situation on the Israelis, asserts that the Iraq War is "unwinable" and that Americans are horrifirf at the number of Iraqi civilians killed, and that AL Quada is in full operation.

It is incredibly poorly edited. The maps are so poorly printed that many are usless and often seem to have been copied from antiquated public domain sources. There are many typos (Arkansas not being capitalized; the casualty figures for World War II are inaccurate, as are the bizarre descriptions of the Naval battles in the Pacific. James Roosevelt was not a member of Congress, but a Marine officer. Also there seem to be sections that were "glued on" by an editor; such as the unneeded description of Europe before the settlement of America.

A Short History of the United States by Robert V. Remini turned out to be a disappointing book. Unfortunately, Remini's book falters in the following areas:

1. Numerous factual mistakes

2. Numerous grammatical and spelling errors

3. The author is bias which becomes much more prominent in later chapters

4. Numerous pieces of history are covered with such brevity and lack of specificity that it felt like some information was just thrown in to have it appear as if the topic was covered

5. Critical pieces of U.S. history are completely omitted

6. Remini, when discussing foreign policy, has a lack of understanding and knowledge which really diminishes his credibility

7. The utilization of maps are of poor quality

While I would not expect a book of only 336 pages to completely cover U.S. history one would at a minimum expect a concise briefing on relevant topics. I was hoping that A Short History of the United States would be a good primer on U.S. history but the above mentioned problems render this book as one that I would not recommend.

Having read this book I have to admit that it can't be faulted for not being true to its advertising. It is short. Other than that the book does fall short in a number of different ways. It offers readers an extremely superficial view of U.S. history with neither context nor meaning added in. The book also contains several editorial errors and some factual error which indicates to me that this book was rushed to market and not vetted very well. All in all I think there are much better one volume histories of the United States and would recommend them over this.

The description was accurate, it was a new book, no markings and it arrived on time. I'm not much a of reader but I find this book interesting as well as informative.

This is precisely the compact overview of U.S. history I wanted to augment my geography course.

The introduction worried me, since Remini appears very biased in his description of Obama and McCain.

Then I ran into clear historical errors:

1. On page 5, Remini states Martin Luther posted his theses to a cathedral door. Although this is the common description, also conveniently told by other historians, Luther scholars highly doubt that he truly posted these on the cathedral door.

2. Again on page 5, Remini states that the astrolabe was used to calculate longitude. It was not; clocks were required and accurate calculation of longitude wasn't possible until the 18th century (See Daniel Boorstin's "The Discoverers" for fantastic discussions of clocks and astronomy).

If just the first few pages contained such glaring errors, I would have a hard time believing anything else Remini writes, so that's as far as I got. It's too bad, because the writing flows nicely and it would be an easy and fun read; but the misinformation is intolerable.

I tried to read this book and, in spite of being a history buff, could not finish it. It is the typical volume made for people who don't understand or care about history and have no idea what really happened or why. I got to the section on Andrew Jackson which portrayed him as being some great hero and helping those poor Native American savages by forcing them off their lands and depriving them of any rights before I put the book away and eventually donated it to charity. Although I think it was more like them showing me charity by taking it off of my hands.