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by Walter A. McDougall You might have studied American History in high school or college, but never like this. In this book, author Walter McDougall manages to explain early American history in a way I never heard before in my textbooks through my academic years. Although it does read more like a textbook than entertaining historical fiction, McDougall presents the stories in a matter-of-fact way that is also highly readable. At times he is sarcastic or wry, such as in instances where he talks about the development of the nation's capital and how speculators attempted to pay for it by forcing a real-estate bubble. The focus of this book is the stories you've never heard. Every schoolchild is taught about the Revolutionary War, but have you ever heard of the fly the Hessians brought with them which resulted in blighted crops across the Northeast? Or how the environment was affected by various damming of lakes and streams and the quest for iron to support the war? I didn't think McDougall was working an angle-trying to tell a history from a certain point-of-view to force me to reach a certain conclusion. Rather, it felt like he was telling the story the way it happened with nuances not usually presented to a mass audience. He explains how various inventions had a hand in certain events in history-stories I hadn't heard before such as the invention of a nail-manufacturing machine being a boon to housebuilding in the late 1700s. History buffs will love this. I loved soaking up the various stories I had never heard about and reading more in-depth why certain events occurred in our history the way they did. He really captures how America evolved as a country in a way that I enjoyed reading. |
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