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Title: The American Pageant: A History of the Republic by Thomas Andrew Bailey, David M. Kennedy ISBN: 0-669-33905-9 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin College Pub. Date: 01 June, 1994 Format: Paperback List Price(USD): $65.56 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.44 (55 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Beats the heck out of Howard Zinn
Comment: This book handles its subject very well. It was the basic text for my 11th Grade history course, where it provided a good balance of mildly amusing wit and genuinely useful information.
The main advantage of "The American Pageant" is that the author is not trying to push a major political agenda. It lacks the patriotic drivel for which "traditional" history texts are often denounced. However, it also lacks the negative, depressing Socialist philosophy which makes Zinn's "People's History of the United States" so difficult to read.
The end result is a history text which does a history text's job: telling what happened. The book covers politics, economics, and major events in a style which is sometimes amusing and usually informative. Although not overly political, it also pays due attention to such important issues as race and gender.
Not a particularly "specialized" book, but an excellent survey text.
Rating: 5
Summary: An absolutely phenomenal work
Comment: I can quite clearly remember the amazement with which I first read the opening paragraphs of Bailey's American Pageant six years ago in high school; and even now, after graduating from college in a field completely unrelated to history, I return to this text to read in my spare time just for the sheer enjoyment of it. I hesitate to even call it a text: rather, it is almost a work of art. Personally, I am flabbergasted by some of the negative reviews I've read below. Of course someone will not like this book when they haven't read it all semester, and then they have an approaching final and try to quickly skim the text and learn all the "important facts" of this nation's history. This book isn't written to satisfy the poor study habits of a mediocre, disinterested student who could care less about history; it is written to express history as seen and studied and understood through the eyes of an absolute genius: Thomas Bailey. For those who believe the book is opinionated, I'll agree with that notion. That's what historians are supposed to do -- they shape and mold historical events into tangible, real entities that one can relate to, rather than just relate dry facts and statistics. (That's what an encyclopedia or government records are for.) If I could, I would give this book more than 5 stars -- surely it deserves as much.
Rating: 2
Summary: Kinda sucks
Comment: No, I'm not some ultraconservative saying that this book has a huge leftist bent, because it doesn't. For example, while in the final chapters it focuses more on the negative impacts of Reagan's economic program than the positive ones, it also talks about how the idea of New World discoverers simply being savage murderers of perfectly innocent, starry-eyed Indians is an exaggeration - so, while the former could be described as a leftist bent, the latter could be described as a rightist bent. But anyway, the true reason this book is obnoxious is because...well...it's obnoxious! Cheesy phrases like "oil, the black milk of the world's economy" abound, and the book seems to obsessively focus on issues such as women's rights, almost like they're required by law to include information about minorities and women every X pages. I'm not saying that white men own the history of America, but it could've flowed better.
This book is also anything but objective, but the biases seem to go both ways at times.
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Title: The American Pageant Complete Guidebook by Thomas Bailey, David M. Kennedy ISBN: 0669350354 Publisher: Not Avail Pub. Date: 01 October, 1993 List Price(USD): $38.36 |
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Title: The American Pageant Guidebook: A Manual for Students by Thomas A. Bailey, David M. Kennedy, Lizabeth Cohen, Mel Piehl ISBN: 0669451169 Publisher: Not Avail Pub. Date: 01 June, 1999 List Price(USD): $29.26 |
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Title: The American Spirit: United States History As Seen by Contemporaries to 1877 by David M. Kennedy, Thomas Bailey, David Kennedy, Thomas Andrew Bailey ISBN: 0618122176 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company Pub. Date: 01 November, 2001 List Price(USD): $49.16 |
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Title: A History of the American People by Paul M. Johnson ISBN: 0060930349 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 March, 1999 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: The American Spirit by Thomas Andrew Bailey, David M. Kennedy ISBN: 039587100X Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company Pub. Date: 30 July, 1997 List Price(USD): $49.16 |
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