America has the world caught in two unbreakable embraces, one soft, exciting, where we all want to stay; and the other militarist, violent, careless of other peoples’ countries. The first is Disney, Hollywood and rock and roll, the second Iraq, Vietnam and Fox News. I may be English to the core, but more than half of everything I read is American; probably three quarters of what I listen to is American, and, I don’t know, 90% of all the movies I watch. And that’s okay, if it wasn’t I wouldn’t do it. It’s not that I’m an Americaphile, except insofar as the whole world is. America is a vast cultural factory. Its production rate is phenomenal. Who invented – and continues to invent – modern life? America. At the same time, America’s politics scare me, both the internal and the external variety. Politically and economically, America isn’t cosy at all, not for non-Americans, and not for quite a few Americans too.It struck me that all my American history (up to LBJ, anyway) has been told to me by singers, actors, novelists, poets, sculptors, painters, dancers, directors, everyone except historians. Hence, my attempt on this vast one-volume history of the whole shebang.As I was walking that ribbon of highway, I saw above me that endless skyway: I saw below me that golden valley: This land was made for you and me.Things fell into place. Hugh Brogan is like a smoothly running giant thresher machine, in goes all the human bodies, the blood, tears, heartbreak, strife and struggle and out comes neat hay-bales of rolling cadenced paragraphs. He’s old school. He’s the way things used to be done, as opposed to, say, Niall Ferguson, who grabs your lapels, drags you round the corner, whispers in your ear, picks your pocket, gets you drunk and leaves you in a motel somewhere in Missouri. Not so Hugh. I think there may be two mild jokes Hugh allows himself in this entire 700 pages. I’d quote them, but you wouldn’t laugh.But here is the grand rolling diorama of the world’s greatest experimental nation-state. Here’s Jamestown, the Stamp Act, the tea party, here’s the shot heard round the world, Fort Ticonderoga, Bunker Hill, Washington, the Declaration, the Constitution, slavery, Buffalo Bill Cody (an ancient lady in my family, dead 40 years, saw him live in Nottingham in 1903), Mormons, the trail of tears, the wild west, and here’s slavery.For me the heart of the matter here was the story of slavery and the Civil War. This is history at its most painfully dramatic – I would say melodramatic.See them big plantations burningHear the cracking of the whipsSmell that sweet magnolia bloomingSee the ghosts of slavery shipsI can hear them tribes a-moaningHear that undertaker’s bellAnd I know nobody can sing the bluesLike Blind Willie McTellFor the first time I understood a little bit how specifically peculiar the South was, how skewed its cotton monoculture, how profound its dreadfulness. Brogan’s language is sometimes jarring in its mildness here.Many Southern women had to pretend not to notice the resemblance between their own offspring and certain little black children on the plantations : proof that their husbands and brothers had been dallying in the slave quarters.“Dallying”? How about “raping” ? Perhaps an indication, like the use of “native Americans” to mean white people born in the USA as opposed to immigrants, that this book was written in 1983.I would like to shamble discursively through American history, throwing old song lyrics and advertising jingles into the mix until I sound like a John Dos Passos novel from 1922. I’m glad I’m now clearer about what robber barons were and how machine politics works, and how John Brown’s soul has had to do a whole lot of marching on, and how Obama in the White House seems even more extraordinary than I thought it was in 2008 , but I think I tax your patience enough in these reviews. This book is recommended.Swing low, chariot, come down easyTaxi to the terminal zone;Cut your engines, cool your wings,And let me make it to the telephone.Los Angeles, give me Norfolk Virginia,Tidewater four ten o nineTell the folks back home this is the promised land callin'And the poor boy is on the line
A well-written history book, always a pleasant surprise. Brogan is extensive, well-researched, passionate and humourous. A great overview of a book which has to, by its nature, miss out the bits of history that really interest me: the people, the culture, the art. I'm taking it as a baseline and suspect reading Howard Zinn's 'People's History of the United States' will give me a more rounded feel for the country's variety and passions. On the level of national politics, though, it's comprehensive.A few of Brogan's quips I enjoyed:On Sam Adams: 'He had a genuine vocation for politics, which was just as well, since he was incompetent at everything else.' p. 138.According to Clemenceau, Woodrow Wilson was, 'next to General Pershing..., was the most obstinate man he had ever met.' p. 483And on Clemenceau, 'Presiding at the conference, with grey gloves and weary eyes, he displayed all the characteristic virtues and vices of French diplomacy: above all, its brilliant short-sightedness.' p. 485He also quoted GK Chesterton who, when speaking about the First World War said, 'The world cannot be made safe for democracy; it is a dangerous trade.' p. 476On bankers in the lead up to the Great Depression: there were not 'effective means for ensuring that bankers or stockbrokers were honest. All too many of them were not; and all too many were idiots.' p. 507He enjoys a good poke at pollsters: ' The "Literary Digest", a distinguished magazine, conducted a poll by telephone and predicted that Roosevelt would lose [re-election]. It had not noticed that 67 per cent of American households still lacked telephones, though their members had votes.' With Roosevelt winning all states except Maine and Vermont, 'The "Literary Digest" went out of business.' pp. 544-5On the approach to the Second World War: 'Public opinion throughout the West had learned many lessons from the First World War, almost all of them wrong.' p. 552On John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State during the Cold War under Eisenhower: 'was all to eager to meddle wherever he saw a chance to do so. He was over-confident that he understood whatever was going on.' p. 610I also liked discovering the origins of the terms scalawag and carpet-bagger; Southerners who co-operated with Reconstruction after the civil war and Northerners who came south in the same period.
Do You like book The Penguin History Of The USA (2001)?
This stimulating introduction to American history is well-written, provocative and enjoyable. For the most part, Brogan prefers to analyse large-scale themes rather than track key events and battles - as such, there is a luminous comparison of the status of women and slaves in the antebellum South, but no mention of any of the battles of Revolutionary War. The prose flows agreeably, and the book is relatively well-structured, with separate chapters ensuring that certain themes such as the Indians and Civil Rights era receive appropriate treatment. Brogan's only major weakness is his tendency to moralise about the past: excoriating the United States for the Vietnam War is not part of the historian's remit, and his personal opinions sit ill in such a wide-ranging and nuanced analytical work.
—Edward
A very concise and yet still strangely detailed history of one of the youngest super powers ever to exist. It is an effective and informative text that provides a complete history of the United States, although I must admit I was slightly let down by the lack of detail in later years, from Kennedy onwards. Brogan has a good degree of insight into the events and imparts this in a sometimes comical, but always fair way, never making assumptions unless he had solid foundations. All in all I found this an incredibly informative, if not slightly hard going due to the amount of fact covered, and one that deserves every attribute given to it by critics and ordinary readers alike. I would highly recommend it to anyone who is seriously interested in developing a more in depth knowledge about the history of this great country, scholars and casual readers alike.
—Lily Loves Indie
It’s been a long time since I read a concise history book on the United States of America. The last time being somewhere in the muddle of high school where amazingly the history teacher once said referring to the section on Vietnam War while jerking his head in a disgusted manner, “We don’t want to get into that mess,” and then refused to discuss the issue any further. Without a doubt I don’t feel that my old teacher would have had the nerve or knowledge to put forth a rendering of the (long) turn of events that led to that particular war with the same canniness of author Brogan. Of course having had the great pleasure of travelling through much of the United States, and because I enjoy checking up on local and state history, I am well aware of the general historical development of what now is America. However I was not quite so aware of the long term consequences of America’s foreign policies, policies that often led to the historical enlargement of the country, and here Brogan’s book continually opened my eyes to America’s image. I most enjoyed in Brogan’s book the lack of “what-ho the gang’s all here” silly Andy Rooney vibe that was so present in the Federal Textbooks of my youth. Like many Americans, my own ancestors were not in America for much of the described history of America and to boot those school text books often made the assumption that cultural and geographical differences were minimal. They certainly are not. Brogan’s chapters focused on the issues of a particular period (without tiring patterns of blow by blow events and overstating dates) leading to the outcome and then the outcomes are drawn throughout the whole book so that a good picture emerges of the geopolitical development of the country. I admired his enthusiasm and insight in the chapter about the writing of the Constitution, something only perhaps a non American could achieve so well, we Americans most likely taking it for granted. I appreciated his ending of the Reconstruction in a responsible manner that made the tragically stalled aftermath visible in the later chapter on monumental Civil Rights Movement. Again I seem to remember the Civil War ending in 1865 hurrah and a whoops what happened to the 100 years in between until equal rights and Martin Luther King haunting feeling. Little wonder I decided to study Medieval, Soviet and Russian history at high school “honor’s levels”. Actually American history is passionately interesting.
—Persephone Abbott
