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There are so many wonderful book
that will enhance your learning about the people and places in our
studies this year. If you love to read, any of these books will be
a real treat for you and they could also be an alternate assignment or extra credit. Be sure to ask me about it. |
1776 by David McCullough |
This monograph appeared some 40 yrs. AFTER I got a degree
in America History and briefly pursued some post grad curriculum in
same. This is what American history should be about. For those that find
history boring, this spyglass examination of a very brief, but trying
time, in our history, as recounted by David McCullough, becomes truly
electric. One learns that George Washington was truly a giant in many
dimensions; persevering against all odds with few trusted confidants and
soldiers, snatched victory from the very jaws of despair and defeat.
Nothing that I can say here can do justice to neither the importance nor
the sense of pride that one can feel to live in a country born of such a
terrible struggle and paid for with lives and fortunes. Those payments
are still being made today. Those people in 1776 knew why and how they
were going to get it done. They spoke it, they wrote it and they
BELIEVED that God would see them through. David McCullough makes sure
that the reader learns this. Thank you David McCullough, for making this
old man even more proud to be an American. |
John Adams by David McCullough |
Left to his own devices, John Adams might
have lived out his days as a Massachusetts country
lawyer, devoted to his family and friends. As it was,
events swiftly overtook him, and Adams--who, David
McCullough writes, was "not a man of the world" and not
fond of politics--came to greatness as the second
president of the United States, and one of the most
distinguished of a generation of revolutionary leaders.
He found reason to dislike sectarian wrangling even more
in the aftermath of war, when Federalist and
anti-Federalist factions vied bitterly for power,
introducing scandal into an administration beset by
other difficulties--including pirates on the high seas,
conflict with France and England, and all the public
controversy attendant in building a nation.
Overshadowed by the lustrous
presidents Washington and Jefferson, who bracketed his
tenure in office, Adams emerges from McCullough's
brilliant biography as a truly heroic figure--not only
for his significant role in the American Revolution but
also for maintaining his personal integrity in its
strife-filled aftermath. McCullough spends much of his
narrative examining the troubled friendship between
Adams and Jefferson, who had in common a love for books
and ideas but differed on almost every other imaginable
point. Reading his pages, it is easy to imagine the two
as alter egos. (Strangely, both died on the same day,
the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of
Independence.) But McCullough also considers Adams in
his own light, and the portrait that emerges is
altogether fascinating.
--Gregory McNamee
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Common Sense by Thomas Paine |
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The Freemasons in America: Inside the Secrete Society by
H. Paul Jeffers |
Jeffers' follow-up to his 2005
historical overview Freemasons takes a look at famous Masons in America,
a list that includes 14 presidents, from Washington to Ford, as well as
Benjamin Franklin, Davy Crockett and Neil Armstrong. Instead of
exploring the influence that the secret society may have had on men like
these, however, Jeffers contents himself to recording Mason-related
historical anecdotes. The most interesting take place during the Civil
War, such as the story of a dying Confederate Mason assisted by a Union
brother at Gettysburg after "exhibiting the Masonic sign of distress."
Despite the alluring subtitle, however, there is very little here that
goes "inside" the society: no secrets are revealed, though Jeffers does
briefly explore the possible influence of the society on the men who
drafted the Constitution, designed U.S. currency and laid out
Washington, D.C. Although Jeffers avows that he is not a Mason, an
undercurrent of tacit approval for the Society further betrays the
promise of the title. Though it may appeal to Freemasons and their
supporters, it may be off-putting to the general reader that Jeffers
doesn't offer a more reasoned, skeptical or revealing take. |
The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin
Franklin by H. W. Brands
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Franklin's story is the story
of a man an exceedingly gifted man and a most engaging one. It is also
the story of the birth of America and this mans discovery in himself,
and how he then helped create the world at large," says Texas A&M
historian Brands in the prologue to his stunning new work. Franklin's
father took him out of school at age 11, but the boy assiduously
sacrificed sleep (while working as an apprentice printer) to read and
learn, giving himself rigorous exercises to develop his ease with
language and discourse, among other disciplines. In essence, as Brands
vividly demonstrates, Franklin defined the Renaissance man. He made
multiple contributions to science (electricity, meteorology), invention
(bifocal lenses, the Franklin furnace) and civic institutions (the
American Philosophical Society, the University of Pennsylvania, the U.S.
Post Office). But Brands is primarily concerned with Franklin's
development as a thinker, politician and statesman and places his
greatest emphasis there. In particular, Brands does an excellent job of
capturing Franklin's exuberant versatility as a writer who adopted
countless personae evidence of his gift for seeing the world through a
variety of different lenses that not only predestined his prominence as
a man of letters but also as an agile man of politics. From Franklin's
progress as a self-declared "Briton" serving as London agent for
Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and other colonies to his evolution as an
American (wartime minister to France, senior peace negotiator with
Britain and, finally, senior participant at the Constitutional
Convention), Brands, with admirable insight and arresting narrative,
constructs a portrait of a complex and influential man ("only Washington
mattered as much") in a highly charged world. |
The Greater Journey by David McCullough |
At
first glance, The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris might seem
to be foreign territory for David McCullough, whose other books have
mostly remained in the Western Hemisphere. But The Greater Journey
is still a quintessentially American history. Between 1830 and 1900,
hundreds of Americans--many of them future household names like Oliver
Wendell Holmes, Mark Twain, Samuel Morse, and Harriet Beecher
Stowe--migrated to Paris. McCullough shows first how the City of Light
affected each of them in turn, and how they helped shape American art,
medicine, writing, science, and politics in profound ways when they came
back to the United States. McCullough's histories have always managed to
combine meticulous research with sheer enthusiasm for his subjects, and
it's hard not to come away with a sense that you've learned something
new and important about whatever he's tackled. The Greater Journey is,
like each of McCullough's previous histories, a dazzling and
kaleidoscopic foray into American history by one of its greatest living
chroniclers. --Darryl Campbell
“An ambitious, wide-ranging study of how
being in Paris helped spark generations of American
genius. . . . A gorgeously rich, sparkling patchwork,
eliciting stories from diaries and memoirs to create the
human drama McCullough depicts so well.”
—Kirkus Reviews
(starred review)
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Another stirring effort by the
author of Paul Revere's Ride (Oxford, 1994). Readers will again cheer
American perseverance, inventiveness, and improvisation as Washington,
his officers, and their men turn the early military defeats of Long
Island and New York City into victory at Trenton and Princeton. The
opening chapter is devoted to the painting Washington Crossing the
Delaware. Then the author discusses the British, Hessian, and American
military units that were involved in these campaigns and gives
background on their officers. This is Fischer's strong suit: he tells
stories and gives details that bring history alive. He makes the point
that decisions made for varying reasons by converging sets of people
determine history. In the hands of such a thorough researcher and
talented writer, this is powerful stuff. The bulk of the book deals with
the battles and their aftermath. The text is enriched by small
reproductions of portraits, many by Charles Willson Peale, of the major
players. The last chapter summarizes Fischer's points and would make a
good teaching tool by itself. |
Longitude, by
Dava Sobel |
This book is full of gems for anyone interested in history, geography,
astronomy, navigation, clock making, and--not the least--plain old human
ambition and greed.--The Philadelphia Inquirer
The true story of a lone genius who solved the
greatest scientific problem of his time. During the great ages of
exploration, "the longitude problem" was the gravest of scientific
challenges. Lacking the ability to determine their longitude,
sailors were literally lost at sea as soon as they lost sight of land.
Ships ran aground on rocky shores; those traveling well-known routes
were easy prey to pirates. John Harrison dared to imagine a
mechanical solution--a clock that would keep precise time at sea,
something no clock had been able to do on land. And the race was
on... |
The Map that Changed the World, by Simon Winchester |
William Smith, the orphaned son of an English country blacksmith, became
obsessed with creating the world's first geological map and ultimately
became the father of modern geology. This book is, at its foundation, a
very human tale of endurance and achievement, of one man's dedication in
the face of ruin and homelessness. The world's coal and oil industry,
its good mining, its highway systems, and its railroad routes were all
derived entirely from the creation of Smith's first map. Wow! What
an accomplishment. |
The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman |
The world is flattening which
requires us to run faster in order to stay in place. Has the world
gotten too small and too fast for human beings and their political
systems to adjust in a stable manner? The World Is Flat is a
timely and essential update o globalization, its successes and
discontents, powerfully illuminated by one of our most respected
journalist, Thomas Friedman. |
Hot, Flat and Crowded by Thomas Friedman |
America has a problem and the world has a problem.
America's problem is that it has lost its way in recent years--partly
because of 9/11 and partly because of the bad habits that we have
let build up over the last three decades, bad habits that have weakened
our society's ability and willingness to take on big challenges.
The world also has a problem: It is getting hot, flat, and crowded.
That is global warming, the stunning rise of middle classes all over the
world, and rapid population growth have converged in a way that could
make our planet dangerously unstable. The best way for America to
solve its big problems--the best way for America to get its "groove"
back--is for us to take the lead in solving the world's big problem. |
A Young Peoples History of the United States, Vol.1 by
Howard Zinn |
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A Young People's History of
the United States brings to US history the viewpoints of
workers, slaves, immigrants, women, Native Americans,
and others whose stories, and their impact, are rarely
included in books for young people. A Young People's
History of the United States is also a companion volume
to The People Speak, the film adapted from A People's
History of the United States and Voices of a People’s
History of the United States.
Beginning with a look at Christopher Columbus’s arrival
through the eyes of the Arawak Indians, then leading the
reader through the struggles for workers’ rights,
women’s rights, and civil rights during the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, and ending with the current
protests against continued American imperialism, Zinn in
the volumes of A Young People’s History of the United
States presents a radical new way of understanding
America’s history. In so doing, he reminds readers that
America’s true greatness is shaped by our dissident
voices, not our military generals.
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The authors explore
both oft-cited documents-the Declaration of Independence, Emancipation
Proclamation, and Roe v. Wade--as well as those that are less
famous. Among these are George Washington's letter to Alexander
Hamilton, which essentially outline America's military strategy for the
next 150 years, and Herbert Hoover's speech on business ethics, which
examines the government's role in regulating private enterprise.
By helping readers explore history at its source, this book sheds new
light on the principles and personalities that have made America great.
Praise for A Patriot's History of the United States:
''This book has taught me more about our history than any I've read in
years. A Patriot's History of the United States should be
required reading for all Americans.'' -- Glenn Beck
''A fluid account of America from the discovery of the continent up to
the present day.'' --Wall Street Journal |