American Heritage History of the United States (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Historian Douglas Brinkley freely admits that this huge new book is not a "comprehensive history of our nation's origins and developments," but is intended to be "an illustrated volume meant to pique the general reader's interest in U.S. history." Brinkley is perhaps being too modest: his text, though necessarily fast-paced, does provide a substantial overview history of the United States.

Brinkley's narrative begins in a Europe thrashing with political and religious turmoil, follows the tumult to the New World, and ends 600 pages later with a comparison of the Internet to Thomas Jefferson's ideal of a "truly open marketplace of ideas." The writing is clear and concise throughout, and major political and economic themes of American history are essentially divided into the book's 22 chapters. Obviously, much material had to be omitted, but Brinkley's editorial decisions on what deserved inclusion are sound. He has a genuine feel for both what is important and how to present it in a lively manner.

The hundreds of illustrations, including maps, paintings, and photographs, are central to the concept of the book, and caption writer Julie Fenster's contributions (some of which might be termed "mini-essays") can't be overlooked. A potential flaw in books of this sort is that overly flashy design can impede the narrative, but the American Heritage History of the United States succeeds admirably in being both attractive and functional in its execution. --Robert McNamara

From Library Journal

Distinguished Professor of History and director of the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans, Brinkley here gives America a good going-over.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 640 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (November 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067086966X
• ISBN-13: 978-0670869664
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 9.5 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #835,139 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars This book was very disappointing., February 20, 1999

By A Customer

Brinkley combines the worst of political correctness with sloppy editing and a weird selection of what to include. He begins in his Introduction by apologizing for not including more about Native Americans. He seems to forget himself throughout the book because he is unable to settle on whether these folks should be called Native Americans or Indians. When discussing Balboa he makes an unnecessary comment about how Balboa treated the natives he found. True to his political colors, Mr. Brinkley has only positive things to say about the Aztecs. You will learn how poorly western europeans treated the peoples they found here but nowhere will you learn about the blood lust of the Aztecs. The author explains early in his history that space forces him to be selective about what he includes. As a result, we are given mounds of information about low-level twentieth century individuals but you will look in vain for a reference to Jonathan Edwards or such watershed events in American history as the Great Awakening in the eighteenth century. The book is filled with typos and poor editing. My favorite is a caption that describes greenbacks but shows a picture of confederate money. We are told that The Great Train Robbery is a feature film and that The Birth of a Nation introduced what have now become a number of standard film techniques. Both of these statements are untrue. The Great Train Robbery runs about 15 minutes as I recall. The Birth of a Nation introduced no new film techniques. It simply used existing techniques in a magnificent way. As Mr. Brinkley says, space does not allow me to give more examples. The ones I have given are representative of the manifold problems with this book. If you're looking for a good illustrated one-volume history of the United States, try Eyes of a Nation. It does not pretend to be a comprehensive history but it is better illustrated than this book and does not try to sell itself as something it is not. Good one-volume histories without illustrations are those by Henry Steele Commager and Paul Johnson. Not suprisingly, Johnson's book is not listed in the author's bibliography.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not Perfect, But A Decent Review of US History, November 2, 2000

By	John Orfield (Cincinnati) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

It's a daunting challenge to tackle a subject as vast as the History of the United States -- a topic, like the United States itself, rooted as much in emotion and propaganda as in facts and the truth. Texts such as these almost always invite criticism, which makes you wonder why the people who believe they know more than the author do not write books on the subject themselves.

I, for one, believe Brinkley did a remarkable job, although the book remains a little too superficial for my own tastes. Still, Brinkley said himself that this book "is not aimed to please academic scholars or specalists" and admitted that he "had nightmares about receiving letters of disappointment." Come to think of it, the entire introduction reads like an apology for the book you are about to read. Not exactly confidence-inspiring but I think Brinkley does indeed underestimate his own work. It is a very healthy review of American History. The text is thorough without being too weighty, the story flows extremely well without getting too sidetracked (which kills many historical texts and with good reason -- American History is an inherently complicated subject that doesn't always lend itself to a flowing, linear narrative) and personally I didn't find the book's errors too egregious (although the other reviewer was absolutely right -- the Greenbacks error is hilarious, though hardly earth shattering).

The political correctness charge is more subjective, and I invite everone to make up their own mind about that. Personally, I found it refreshing that Brinkley didn't portray the men who colonized this land as the romantic, globetrotting heroes we read about in elementary school. Let's face it -- they were selfish, greedy men whose wanderlust was financed for religious, political, social, and economic gain. As for the Aztecs, they weren't exactly the innocents Brinkley would have us believe but it still doesn't excuse what Cortez did to their magnificent civilization. That's just one example. You can call that political correctness, but I haven't discovered a text yet that deviates from that fact.

The most astounding aspect of this text is its exclusion of the Native American story -- an exclusion Brinkley himself apologizes for (he blames "space limitations"), again in the introduction, as he directs us to a couple of other texts for a more complete telling of Native American History. How could you have a book entitled "History of the United States" with such brief, cursory mentions of the people who inhabited this land before most of us got here? It's almost inexcusable, really. Then again, considering this country's treatment of Native Americans over the centuries, it's almost cruelly fitting that "space limitations" pushed their story out of the book.

Overall, a worthwhile book, though not exactly a text that historians will reference for years to come. But, again, as Brinkley said, that's not the purpose of this book.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Okay, Here's the Deal..., April 10, 2002

By	Passionate (Miramar, FL United States) - See all my reviews

Judging from previous reviews, apparently if you're a US history afficionado you should stay away from this book.

However, if like me you've always fallen asleep in history class, this is the book for you. Don't get me wrong; history is my hobby--WORLD history, that is. With US history, it seems I've had the great misfortune of having professors who loved to dwell on minutia. And since minutia is tremendously dreary when the student doesn't first have the overall picture, it is no wonder many of us find ourselves "otherwise engaged" in class.

I am an American adult who decided it was time to know more about our nation's past, and chose a one-volume work to get me started. I found Douglas Brinkley easy to read, in spite of the fact that his book is larger and weighs more than a small household pet. I've always deduced that because America is so much younger than old world countries, instructors have felt a need to compensate for its history's brevity by weighing it down with innumerable bits of information that are probably better left to the next course level. But I did not feel that way reading Brinkley. More than once, I found myself muttering "so that's what that was about...". The conversational writing style and supporting illustrations made for, if not exactly a page-turner, the closest thing a history book can get to that.

Although it is obvious from page one that the author has very strong beliefs, they are so blatant that I did not feel it was a hindrance--any reasonable adult will question whether the characters and events were truly as noble or ominous as the writer has painted them, and readers should certainly never make judgments based on one book alone anyway. This work is really just to have an overview of US history, and people can decide from there what they'd like to learn more about. To include all the details other reviewers felt should have been in this book would have made it the size of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Just one more thing--who the heck IS Emma Goldman????? ;-)