A review by zhelana
America: A Narrative History, Volume 2 by George Brown Tindall

challenging hopeful informative medium-paced

4.0

This book tells the story of America mostly by using a "great men" perspective, breaking history down into each president since the Civil War to Obama's First Term. Then it goes through each 4 year bracket of time telling about the domestic and international challenges that faced each president. It was great in that it put disparate things in chronological order so that you could really see when different things that you knew a little about happened relative to each other. But it was a little frustrating because sometimes I think the authors had to scrounge for something to say about each category of things for various presidents. For example, did Lincoln deal with international issues? Sure, but is that really the point? The break between issues divided by president also made some things feel different than themselves. For example, the Vietnam War spanned several presidencies and the book focused on how different presidents dealt with Vietnam, but never dealt with Vietnam as a unified issue. Any unified thought that spans American history was likewise lost in the division into each presidential term. That said, it is really hard to write a history of America that touches on all of the important issues without either losing historical context or losing many of the issues. This book did a pretty good job of spanning that line.