Don't Know Much About® History, Anniversary Edition: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned (Don't Know Much About Series)

This book goes in detail with our American history. I read this whole book in one week. Easy to read and understand. I now have it in our restroom for my guest to read and when they come out someone knows just a bit more about our great country. From the good and bad, history is a must.

Obviously the title of the book is a misnomer. It is clear from the start that it is concerned only with American history. The goal of the author is to make history interesting so that people who have dosed off in history class can get interested again. In that regard, the book is successful. There is a strong narrative flow and a suspense that keeps you turning pages, despite the awkwardness of the question-answer format and the annoying repetitiveness. Pluses include the "voices", excerpts and quotes from historical figures and documents, as well as a long list of book recommendations for those wishing to delve further.The book suffers from major flaws, however: in many places, it is shallow as well as selective in its choice of topics. Much of the book boils down to a narration of "facts" without much analysis, the kind of information you could get reading headlines in news archives. While there is an argument for not making the book excessively long, much space is wasted by those "timelines" of every war and crisis that serve no purpose other than to bore the reader to death.Secondly, the selective choice of topics is most visibly felt in the area of foreign policy. Much of the outside world is disregarded until it makes itself felt (e.g., during a war). In this, the book is symptomatic of isolationist American culture as a whole, where people will look up a country only after we have troops there. That tendency to ignore the outside world is precisely why American foreign policy is in shambles. If a book that proclaims the wish to re-educate Americans about history is woefully inadequate when it comes to describing America's relation with the outside world, then there is no hope!As an example, I choose the Middle East. That region, of vital importance to the US, recipient of the bulk of US foreign aid, heavy trade and influence, and location of most of America's recent wars, is brought up in only a few places. A few pages are devoted to it in connection with the Arab Oil Embargo, without much explanation of the background - why the Arabs and Israel were fighting. There is no real discussion of the question of Palestine, the deep injustice most people in the Arab world feel about that issue, and the role of the US in creating and perpetuating that injustice. The US role in the failed Peace Process of the 1990s is completely absent. The book talks about the two Iraq wars, again without much background as to the whys. There is no mention of how, throughout the 1990s, Dick Cheney and others in the subsequent Bush administration were lobbying Clinton for an Iraq War. There is no mention of the Caspian Oil pipeline, again a desire since the 1990s and one of the major reasons for a war in Afghanistan.Finally, the book is more or less a "names and dates" book. Too many pages are devoted to descriptions of presidents and their campaigns, and too few devoted to describing how ordinary Americans lived. A much better read is Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States", but even that has gaping holes in foreign issues, especially when it relates to the Middle East.

I bot this because I wanted to replace an earlier version that had been lost. This one is has much more on recent events but does not include a lot of historical information that was in the prior editions.The new info is good but usually overly detailed.I particularly thought the prior versions that discussed slavery in the US should have been included as it was good info and helped explain how the slave trade got started and why it grew so much with the cotton plantations after the cotton gin was invented.

The book is exactly what it claims to be - a brief recap of the significant periods, events, and people of US history. None of the sections tell you the whole story, but there are some decent references for further reading, and I found that browsing Wikipedia and a world map while reading helped me fill in some gaps. Some content gets repeated (especially in the timelines of wars, etc) and some sections are oddly short (for instance, the Tonkin Incident section doesn't actually describe what happened, although it was later discussed in a timeline), but those aren't major issues. I liked the references back and forth through history that show larger patterns, cycles, and causes, and I appreciate the sustained attention paid to systemic inequalities, especially for blacks and women, that have persisted through US history.This is my first Kindle book (I'm reading it on a mac) so maybe this is an issue of the medium, but I find the formatting pretty clunky, and the lack of photos, images, and maps is unfortunate.

I have to say that I really, really loved this book - to my surprise! It was assigned as the text book for a Legal Analysis of U.S. History class. However, it's really not a legal book at all. My only complaint is that it is definitely written with a little bit of a liberal buyist and slant. However, other than that it is excellent and super interesting. It's not like the super boring history text books of childhood and not long that way either. It makes this stuff really real, relevant and highly interesting. This book covers America from 1492 with Columbus and the Indians to President Obama! It was really shocking for me to learn just how we got "HERE" on so many different subjects (even including our relationship with Iran and the mess of North Korea, and who were the pilgrims and first settlers here really anyway). It answers all the questions you could possibly have. Amazing reading!

Where else can you get an easy-to-read overview of 500 years of American history--from who really discovered America to how we elected our first black president--and have FUN reading it? I saw author Kenneth C. Davis interviewed on CNN and was mesmerized by what he had to say and how he said it. When they flashed his credentials on the screen as the author of this book, I bought it immediately. This isn't your high school or college history textbook. This one is so much fun you might even stay up past your bedtime reading it! Quite simply, read this book and you'll be quite literate when it comes to the big facts about our nation's past--whether you want to win at Trivial Pursuit, impress someone at a cocktail party or (most important) develop an understanding of why and how things happened THEN that deeply impact our NOW.

The book is funny, but the printing is really bad. There is a double image issue every few pages, and my eyes are almost blind. If I didn't make annotation when I read this book at the beginning, I would return it to Amazon definitely. I hope I'm the only one who got this defective print unluckily.

I received it on 26 August ( it arrived earlier than I had expected ). The book itself is very interesting. School text books very often describe the fabricated history ( especially regarding wars ) to convince the people for jusification of the government's wrong decision and we tend to have biased vision about it, however, we ourselves should always try to have another view point in order to verify the truth with more flexible mental atrtitude. This book can give us such opportunities.

As a previous teacher of American History, I think this should be used as a textbook. Davis brings history to life and presents the little details of events and people that similar works leave out. All is books are a delight to read.

I really like everything written by Kenneth Davis. This is no exception. In fact, I liked it so much that I've given it as a Christmas present.

smashing

I had the unabridged 1990/1995-version on compact cassettes (heard it through >10 times from beginning to end) and bought this for an update. Dick Estell read it far better - he thought about what he read, he "lived" it, whereas Arthur Morey's reading is superficial (is that the right word? - I'm a German) - Morey does not transmit Davis' emotional writing. Estell did!This abridged 5-CD version is (for my taste) also much too short. Esp. the 18th/19th century, plus the period until Carter are reduced to some crucial events, and so many interesting parts were victims to the shortening.To the historically interested, I'd recommend the unabridged version - however: that's 29 hours! And available on Audible only, as far as I know. If you want that, but don't have audible, buy a used old one (which has the huge advantage of Dick Estell as the narrator!), plus this 6,5hr update, esp. for the period from Bush sr. to Obama.Anyhow - for a 6.5hr-rush through American History - this anniversary edition is still perfect.As others pointed out, this recommendation is mainly for liberal or open minds. Davis does not evade or downplay dirty spots in America's history or it's protagonists.For conservative republicans with too low blood pressure, it's also perfect ;-)H.Hellwig