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4.05 AVERAGE
4.05 AVERAGE
informative
slow-paced
Great to listen to audio book where author reads himself.
David McCullough can read me the phone book! I listened to this book and as with his others, his voice adds to the experience of the book. I enjoyed hearing some of the speeches he has given over time and I appreciated that in so many of them he encourages his audience to be readers. It is clearly a theme for him.
I know he does an enormous amount of research for his books, and I hope he has one in the works; I want more David McCullough!
I know he does an enormous amount of research for his books, and I hope he has one in the works; I want more David McCullough!
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
informative
reflective
fast-paced
Picked up my copy of this book from The Alamo gift shop. A good collection of short speeches made by David McCullough that not only tells a good American story, focused on extraordinary Americans, but a book that reenforces American exceptionalism.
Good collection of essays about America and what it represents to people in very different situations.
I've enjoyed, with some reservations, some of McCullough's other books, but the more informal nature of this book as a series of speeches where McCullough more directly lays out his ideas laid bare the flaws I saw in his other writings. He firmly believes in the unadulterated greatness of the US unimpeded by the great harms he often mentions as an aside and discards as a product of their time or one facet of complicated men.
He talks about how character creates destiny in the same speech where later he acknowledges, as an aside of course in the process of telling a story about great men of the time, that so many Black people were enslaved, and he fails to see or remark on the contradictions of those ideas.
Either he believes those enslaved had character not worth of freedom or escape or he simply does not account for those who aren't the rich and powerful in the way he constructs his analysis, work, and stories. I don't accuse him of the former and firmly believe it's more the latter. But it's still harmful.
It was at points entertaining, many points redundant stories and arguments made in different speeches, and overall regardless of whether you like his writing or share my critique, it simply doesn't feel like a book that needed to be written or read.
He talks about how character creates destiny in the same speech where later he acknowledges, as an aside of course in the process of telling a story about great men of the time, that so many Black people were enslaved, and he fails to see or remark on the contradictions of those ideas.
Either he believes those enslaved had character not worth of freedom or escape or he simply does not account for those who aren't the rich and powerful in the way he constructs his analysis, work, and stories. I don't accuse him of the former and firmly believe it's more the latter. But it's still harmful.
It was at points entertaining, many points redundant stories and arguments made in different speeches, and overall regardless of whether you like his writing or share my critique, it simply doesn't feel like a book that needed to be written or read.
America's favorite historian has compiled a collection of talks and addresses he's given over the years reminding his readers living in a divided nation just what it was that made America great in the first place. If I were a high school history teacher, this would by my required summer reading pick. Several of the talks are from commencement addresses and have that aspirational quality to them. One closes this book inspired to be a better American. A quick, patriotic must-read.
A great, inspiring book by my favorite historian. This is a collection of speeches that David McCullough has given over the years. Many of them were commencement speeches and of course are meant to inspire. Much of what he talks about is the importance of reading and history. I will be passing this book on...but not until I copy some quotes!