About this title: A history of American society and the American nation, written by the celebrated English journalist. Keenly sensitive to the contradictions that Americans embody within themselves--materialism vs. prudism, naivete vs. cynicism--Johnson attempts to show the ways in which the America character shaped, and was shaped by, American history.
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Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Date Published: 1999-03-01
ISBN-13:9780060930349ISBN:0060930349
Description: Fair. Edge, corner and cover wear. Creases on spine, tape reinforced edges and spine. Moderate highlighting. Fast Ship! 100% Guaranteed Purchase! read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Date Published: 1999-03-01
ISBN-13:9780060930349ISBN:0060930349
Description: Good. Approximately 12 pages with notes and underlining. Several pages that have been dogeared. Cover has minor wear with bumped corners. Still a good usable copy. Binding is tight. Your Satisfaction Guaranteed. We ship daily. read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Very Good. Great condition for a used book! Minimal wear. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Edition: Us ed.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Date Published: 1998
ISBN-13:9780060168360ISBN:0060168366
Description: Fair in good dust jacket. Highlighting/underlining. Small tear in dj front, underlining in text. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 1104 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: HarperCollins
Date Published: 1998-03-11
ISBN-13:9780060168360ISBN:0060168366
Description: Good. Ex-Library, usual library stamps/stickers/marks inside and outside, no page creases, no writing on text pages, dust jacket has minor shelf-wear, some moister ripples on bottom center. read more
Description: Very Good. 0060168366 Very good hardcover with dust jacket, light edge and corner wear, gift inscription to previous owner inside front. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Date Published: 1997
ISBN-13:9780060930349ISBN:0060930349
Description: Fine. No dust jacket as issued. 2265-Minor cover edge wear. Inside is almost like new. Standard shipping only. Cannot ship to Canada. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 1104 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Date Published: 1999-03-01
ISBN-13:9780060930349ISBN:0060930349
Description: Very Good. Text is clean, bright and unmarked. No names, no marks, no stickers. Binding is tight and square. Cover is VG. Careful packaging and fast shipping. We recommend EXPEDITED MAIL for even faster delivery! read more
Description: Fine. 0060930349 Ships next business day. NEW/UNREAD! ! ! Text is Clean and Unmarked! --Be Sure to Compare Seller Feedback and Ratings before Purchasing--Has a small black line on bottom/exterior edge of pages. May have light shelf wear to cover from storage, if any. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: HarperCollins
Date Published: 1998
ISBN-13:9780060168360ISBN:0060168366
Description: Good in Fair dust jacket. 0060168366. All-encompassing, giant history by British author. Praised for its readablity. This copy has inked "placemarks" every so often, edgestains. Dust jacket intact, but stained and smudged. In removable mylar protector.; Thick 8vo 8" to 9-1/2" tall; 1104 pages. read more
Description: Fine. 0060930349 May show signs of shelf wear. Choose EXPEDITED shipping, receive in 2-5 business days. Please email with questions. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Harpercollins
Date Published: 1999-02-01
ISBN-13:9780060930349ISBN:0060930349
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780060930349. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: HarperCollins
Date Published: 1998-03-11
ISBN-13:9780060168360ISBN:0060168366
Description: Very Good. Gently read condition with slight shelf wear to dust jacket. Clean unmarked text. Binding is tight. Just a few of the back pages have some creasing along very edge of page and bent page tips. We ship quickly 6 days a week! read more
"This was a very thoughtful history of the United States. Johnson talks about how the history of the US is intricately intertwined with religion and God--a perspective that probably didn't make him super popular in the early '90s when the book came out. However, to the intellectually honest, his analysis rings. Some of my favorite parts include his judicial treatment of the slavery issue and his absolute expose of the Kennedy debauchery--which is very applicable with today's political situation. I loved this book and wold encourage anyone to read it who wants a fair and rightly favorable history of this country."
"Paul Johnson writes lively, big picture history. He draws connections between causes and effects, and brings giant figures to life. I don't always agree with his opinions, but I do respect his understanding of history and his ability to write about it convincingly. This book was a nice refresher course to my American History survey classes from school, which for lack of enough weeks in the school year, never seemed to progress past WWII.
My one beef: He includes prurient details disproportionately to the sweep of the whole. Understanding our leaders' moral failings can give insight into their characters, but sometimes I think his level of detail in these episodes lends itself more to a People magazine sort of gratification than to true historical insight."
"I really enjoyed his "Birth of the Modern" book, about world history 1815-1830, and how that time and the personalities who made it were pivotal in the the birth of the modern world as we know it, so I thought I would check out his take on US history. I knew from the previous book that he was conservative, and had his biases(pro free-market, pro religion, pro-individual) but that was fine with me... I liked that he was opinionated and I liked getting a good devil's advocate argument for the other side from what seemed to be a pretty honest broker.
And that held up for most of this book. He made a great case for why those values were integral in making America a great nation, and he told the story up to about FDR with balance and verve.
Post New-Deal though, it just turns into a bitter screed, and loses all sense of balance. FDR and Kennedy were corrupt charlatans(sure, they definitely had their major flaws, but that is all he looked at), Vietnam would have worked if only we had been willing to wage total war(probably would have, but that doesn't make that a good idea), Nixon got a raw deal and Watergate was nothing but a witch-hunt, as was Iran Contra. Political correctness and affirmative action were creeping authoritarianism as opposed to well-meaning and ultimately pretty insignificant efforts to continue down the road of the civil rights movement that went a bit overboard. Moral equivocation of the anti-abortion movement with the anti-slavery movement. Praise for The Bell Curve, and breezy dismissal of the likes of C. Wright Mills, David Riesman, etc. And so on.
I realize he doesn't like a lot of the postwar trends in the US and Europe, but he also makes no effort to engage the historical forces that caused and shaped them, or the good that came out of them(he spends very little time on the civil rights movement, for example.) He does things like applauding the US for engaging the world and taking its rightful place as a superpower postwar, and then turning around and criticizing the inevitable expansion of the bureaucracy that resulted from that, without connecting the one to the other. Or like saying that things like the EPA and the Clean Air act were probably necessary and desireable, even though they slowed the economy, but then praising Reagan's economic genius in rolling them back. Feh. He just fails to engage the complexities and ambiguities and compromises that are a necessary feature of the postmodern, globalized world. He's very good at writing history about the times when WASPS ruled the earth, before everything got complicated by race, gender, sexual orientation, colonialism, and on down the line. He acts like these are invented abstractions, as opposed to social and political realities and changes that were being grappled with in very nasty and difficult ways throughout the latter 2/3rds of the 20th century.
So, disappointing in the end. But, if you want a good lively, opinionated, sympathetic history of the US up to about 1929, you can't go wrong with reading the first 3/4 of this. Even better, read it together with A People's History of the United States, and compare/contrast. You should get most of the story between the two of them."
"The author is British. He became curious about America when he was studying American history in the UK. He writes, "The creation of the United States of America is the greatest of all human adventures..." For example, I knew Eli Whitney invented the Cotton Gin, but I never knew that Eli Whitney helped develop "the American system" of standardized parts, giving the North such supremacy. Thus one man reinvigorated the institution of slavery and helped abolish it."
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