++ The Penguin History of the USA New edition

The fundamental challenge of any one-volume history of the USA (or, indeed, most countries) is to provide some advantage over specialized works addressing a single aspect of the subject. For example, tens of thousands of books exist on the subject of the American Civil War alone; thousands more, on each of the other wars, thousands more on the Civil Rights Movement, and so on. A book on the entire history, from the 1580's to the present (i.e., 1999) will of necessity rely mostly on secondary works, since there is no way an historian can review more than a tiny fraction of the necessary primary historical resources.



In terms of historiography, in other words, a comprehensive history will be a tertiary resource, and hence requires a specific purpose. In some cases, that is met by having many specialists write a book. In other cases, the author wants to summarize the general meaning of a nation's history, or simply have a convenient reference book for routine research. Brogan's book fails at all of these.



Brogan really does not appear to think his subject deserved a serious effort to research, much less understand. His chapter on the English settlement of North America is badly clichéd; for example, he mostly (?) fails to understand that 17th century church denominations had an urgently political dimension: religious denominations of the day were an explicit statement about the legitimacy of certain types of regime. Hence, the antagonism between (say) Catholics and certain types of Protestants in the 1600's was not the same thing as the bigotry that some Catholics or Protestants feel towards each other today.





His chapter on Native Americans reflects a post-1980's understanding that this group has been very badly overlooked and ignored in mainstream historical narratives. However, his research is badly inadequate, and he compensates by endless bromides. One example is right after he quotes a passage from John Winthrop on Indians and their rights to the land:



"Thus the patriarch of New England, justifying his robberies he meant to commit by the best social science of his day. Perhaps his style betrays a slightly uneasy conscience; but even if it does not, he should not be blamed overmuch. The migration of forty million Europeans between 1607 and 1914 is too great a matter to be dealt with by elementary moral texts... Migration, as we have seen, is natural to man. It cannot be reasonably maintained that... the Europeans were wrong to better themselves by sailing to inhabit the largely empty land." (p.60)



Usually these passages in Brogan's work skillfully avoid saying anything whatever. On the one hand, he wants to judge the European settlers fairly, but when they morph into Americans, he is far less inhibited. He babbles on with shopworn expressions or caveats, advertising his "nuance"; but the dancing around seems to accomplish nothing more than to weary the reader, and conceal the fact that he really doesn't know very much about his subject at all, and doesn't see why anyone would want to.
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More Detail For The Penguin History of the USA New edition

• ISBN13: 9780140252552
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.