pjraff's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
4.25
unisonlibrarian's review against another edition
4.0
As with most things Simon Schama writes, it has a title and a subject but is always more about Schama himself than his subjects. Once you see past the academic egotism however you find a rich plethora of information on the history if the USA and how it pertains to the current national character. Brought out to coincide with the historic 2008 elections which Barack Obama would go on to win, this book traces the route of the modern America picking up heavily on the aspects of civil rights and slavery along the way. More a collection of essays than a narrative history it is sometimes difficult to keep track of and often focuses on the lesser known characters that played big parts in major events, such as the Meigs family, who really should be more widely known and appreciated.
It is a very good read and I found it hard to put down after getting past the jumpy style. At times it reads quite closely like a puff piece from a Sunday magazine, particularly at the start, but there is a serious book trying to break through. Eventually it does in a sweeping sort of a way. It condenses huge moments in to personal storylines, perhaps showing a certain regret in the author that he isn’t more of a fictional writer.
Simon Schama is an adopted American from Britain, to hear him speak is to hear leather on willow and the preparation of cream tea but he is a professor at Columbia University, NY, and a was a chair of Harvard by 1980. As a result of this deep personal connection with the US he is perhaps more scathing in places than other British historians would dare try to get away with, on race and immigration particularly, the latter form of xenophobia being nothing new in the “land of the free”. This all builds to the authors assumption however, that things are improving, as is demonstrated by the election of the current, black, president. When Schama gets on the subject of Obama he succumbs to the disease of fawning, favoured by ghost writers and political biographers and finds little criticism of the subject. Though this should be seen within the context of the time frame in which the book was written; at the dog end of Bush II’s presidency when someone like Obama must have shone like the Angel Gabriel himself. He name drops throughout the book and can be fairly accused of arrogance, but it is a good, solid book behind the heavy velour curtains.
It is a very good read and I found it hard to put down after getting past the jumpy style. At times it reads quite closely like a puff piece from a Sunday magazine, particularly at the start, but there is a serious book trying to break through. Eventually it does in a sweeping sort of a way. It condenses huge moments in to personal storylines, perhaps showing a certain regret in the author that he isn’t more of a fictional writer.
Simon Schama is an adopted American from Britain, to hear him speak is to hear leather on willow and the preparation of cream tea but he is a professor at Columbia University, NY, and a was a chair of Harvard by 1980. As a result of this deep personal connection with the US he is perhaps more scathing in places than other British historians would dare try to get away with, on race and immigration particularly, the latter form of xenophobia being nothing new in the “land of the free”. This all builds to the authors assumption however, that things are improving, as is demonstrated by the election of the current, black, president. When Schama gets on the subject of Obama he succumbs to the disease of fawning, favoured by ghost writers and political biographers and finds little criticism of the subject. Though this should be seen within the context of the time frame in which the book was written; at the dog end of Bush II’s presidency when someone like Obama must have shone like the Angel Gabriel himself. He name drops throughout the book and can be fairly accused of arrogance, but it is a good, solid book behind the heavy velour curtains.
adamvolle's review against another edition
4.0
I don't know enough about the discipline of historical research to declare one man the best historian of our time, but I'll fearlessly call Simon Schama the best writer in English of history in our time.
matthew_p's review against another edition
2.0
Lots of interesting history, but the ties to contemporary politics were tenuous at best, and tended to ignore the uglier sides of the history presented at worst.
tinygriff's review
4.0
Excellent! It took me a few months to read as I took it in chunks and had breaks in between, although it is readable enough to hold up as a solo book too.
He makes some very interesting points regarding American politics throughout history and linking them to the Presidential election of 2008 and what the future may hold for America. Some of these were hard to read with hindsight, but often his hopefulness and picture of the character of America as a whole were inspiring.
Simon Schama’s voice is interesting, descriptive, analytic and reminds me of everything I love about history. He tells the stories of the people of America, both past and present, and links them in an insightful and clear way. The chapters are divided into 4 sections: American War, American Fervour, What is an American? and American Plenty. Through these Simon Schama covers the history of the States from the Revolution to the publication of this book in 2008, and uses the themes to highlight and examine various turning points and devleopments withing that time-frame.
He makes some very interesting points regarding American politics throughout history and linking them to the Presidential election of 2008 and what the future may hold for America. Some of these were hard to read with hindsight, but often his hopefulness and picture of the character of America as a whole were inspiring.
Simon Schama’s voice is interesting, descriptive, analytic and reminds me of everything I love about history. He tells the stories of the people of America, both past and present, and links them in an insightful and clear way. The chapters are divided into 4 sections: American War, American Fervour, What is an American? and American Plenty. Through these Simon Schama covers the history of the States from the Revolution to the publication of this book in 2008, and uses the themes to highlight and examine various turning points and devleopments withing that time-frame.
tachyondecay's review
3.0
I wouldn’t necessarily describe myself as anti-American, but I will cop to having anti-American sentiments. I have plenty of American friends, but I chose to move to England before the United States—and, to be perfectly honest, I don’t think I could ever bring myself to live in the United States. There are just some ideas so apparently entrenched in American society that seem so backward to me. And I know my American friends understand—a lot of it seems backward to them too!
It’s something of a trend these days to discuss the “hijacking” of American politics. Corporations have hijacked politics; ultra right-wing evangelicals have hijacked politics; Tea Party patriots have hijacked politics … at this rate, if Bigfoot hasn’t hijacked politics by December, I will be disappointed. There is, of course, a great deal of truth in some of these perspectives, and these discourses are valuable. At the same time, one should not neglect the fact that the United States has always been in a state of uneasy tension between religious freedoms and religious establishment, between liberal and conservative, between society and business. So much of the hijacking happening today is not so much an aberration as it is the latest recurrence in a long line of such events, as Simon Schama attempts to demonstrate in The American Future: A History.
Here are some things I learned from The American Future: A History. Some of them are obvious, yes, and probably don’t require a book to become evident. But it’s always good to be reminded.
There were no “good old days”. Well, maybe if you were a rich, white, European male. But if you’re a rich, white male today, wake up and stop complaining: your days are still pretty good. The idea that the United States of the past was somehow a golden land of opportunity and prosperity, and that it has since declined into its present state, is a myth. Imperialism, racism, and colonialism have always been a part of the United States of America. The religious persecution that so many of the original colonists fled in coming to the shores of the New World eventually caught up with them, and Catholics, Jews, and the apostate Protestant sect of the week were routinely barred from livelihoods and politics. Let’s not even get started about slavery.
Despite the bad, we too often forget about the good. In our rush to cringe at the past, sometimes it’s easy to overlook the people who stood up against tyranny and oppression. I’m not talking about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and other revolutionaries or Founding Fathers. I’m talking about the people who, quietly or not, worked tirelessly on behalf of the disenfranchised, the minorities, every group who did not get a voice in the system. From Return Jonathan Meigs to Fred Bee, there were numerous good people who deserved to be remembered for trying to stop oppression and atrocities, even if they were ultimately unsuccessful.
Hero worship is for losers. The way—or at least this is how it seems from my perspective as an outsider—Americans are taught to venerate the Founding Fathers and other such historical figures without much time spent on more critical perspectives really concerns me. I understand that it’s a big deal that these people helped liberate the colonies from British rule. But they weren’t gods; they were ordinary, flawed individuals. Jefferson had some good ideas. He also owned slaves. And, while his attitude towards the indigenous peoples of the Americas was not as antagonistic as Andrew Jackson’s, it still rested upon the principles of Eurocentric, cultural assimilation. And from what I read about the various textbook guidelines being pushed in certain states, I doubt these views are being explored. And it’s a shame, because if there’s one thing studying any history, from the United States or elsewhere, can teach us, it’s …
We can do so, so much better. We’ve got a long way to go. In the two centuries since gaining independence, the United States has changed greatly—but in some ways, it and the rest of the world continues to repeat the same old mistakes. Claiming we are superior to the people of the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, that we’ve learned our lessons, is misguided at best and woefully delusional at worst. It will be interesting to see what historians two hundred years hence write about our intolerance and indiscretions.
But I’m still an optimist. Even if I would let myself, I can’t bring myself to yield to despair and the cynical proposition that we have finally achieved that crucial intersection of environmental irresponsibility, cultural apathy, and anxious nationalism that will somehow doom us all. History shows that humans are really, really good at screwing things up. We’re also really, really good at surviving our mistakes, in one form or another.
And armed with the knowledge of—and more importantly, the discussion sparked by—history, we can do better. Schama’s history, like a lot of popular history books, tends to focus on episodic accounts of individuals’ contributions. It’s easier that way; we like narratives and we like protagonists. And while that doesn’t always provide an holistic view of the era, it does recreate one salient feature: individuals can make a difference. I’m trying not to get too trite and inspirational here, and I’m not going to wax poetically about how one person can change the entire world. Chances are, most of us are going to go on to lead fairly unremarkable lives and fade away without too many people remember us. (Though we individuals output more information about ourselves than the entirety of the nineteenth century put out, so much of it these days is digital and therefore ephemeral.) But just because we skim along the surface instead of swimming in the deep doesn’t mean we are unimportant, or that our actions have no effect on this world around us.
The American Future: A History left me with very mixed emotions. On one hand, I had been treated to a greatest hits playlist of some of the United States’ most insular and bonehead moves. On the other hand, as you can tell from the above paragraph, Schama manages to convey that contagious optimism emblematic of the 2008 American presidential election. Schama starts by setting himself a goal of exploring where the United Sates might by going by looking to its past. In this, I think he is successful. That being said, I can’t give this book high marks in every category. Schama is very good at belabouring his points and overstaying his welcome. We spend so much time on certain episodes, such as Montgomery Meigs. I enjoyed it, but it was also a little exhausting. Schama’s use of detail is both a blessing and a curse.
As a Canadian whose grasp of American history is probably rudimentary at best, I certainly found this book informative. It was also helpful in a more general sense, for it illuminates the sources of certain cultural habits Americans often express that can puzzle the rest of the world. We learn about manifest destiny in school, but we don’t necessarily understand its origins—now I kind of do. I recommend this book for non-Americans who are trying to understand why some Americans think and act the way they do. American friends, we know not all of you are crazy, and we’re trying very, very hard to put up with those of you who are. But some of us are running out of patience, and it’s time you step up, mmkay? Because the American future is coming, and I want it to be a good one.
It’s something of a trend these days to discuss the “hijacking” of American politics. Corporations have hijacked politics; ultra right-wing evangelicals have hijacked politics; Tea Party patriots have hijacked politics … at this rate, if Bigfoot hasn’t hijacked politics by December, I will be disappointed. There is, of course, a great deal of truth in some of these perspectives, and these discourses are valuable. At the same time, one should not neglect the fact that the United States has always been in a state of uneasy tension between religious freedoms and religious establishment, between liberal and conservative, between society and business. So much of the hijacking happening today is not so much an aberration as it is the latest recurrence in a long line of such events, as Simon Schama attempts to demonstrate in The American Future: A History.
Here are some things I learned from The American Future: A History. Some of them are obvious, yes, and probably don’t require a book to become evident. But it’s always good to be reminded.
There were no “good old days”. Well, maybe if you were a rich, white, European male. But if you’re a rich, white male today, wake up and stop complaining: your days are still pretty good. The idea that the United States of the past was somehow a golden land of opportunity and prosperity, and that it has since declined into its present state, is a myth. Imperialism, racism, and colonialism have always been a part of the United States of America. The religious persecution that so many of the original colonists fled in coming to the shores of the New World eventually caught up with them, and Catholics, Jews, and the apostate Protestant sect of the week were routinely barred from livelihoods and politics. Let’s not even get started about slavery.
Despite the bad, we too often forget about the good. In our rush to cringe at the past, sometimes it’s easy to overlook the people who stood up against tyranny and oppression. I’m not talking about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and other revolutionaries or Founding Fathers. I’m talking about the people who, quietly or not, worked tirelessly on behalf of the disenfranchised, the minorities, every group who did not get a voice in the system. From Return Jonathan Meigs to Fred Bee, there were numerous good people who deserved to be remembered for trying to stop oppression and atrocities, even if they were ultimately unsuccessful.
Hero worship is for losers. The way—or at least this is how it seems from my perspective as an outsider—Americans are taught to venerate the Founding Fathers and other such historical figures without much time spent on more critical perspectives really concerns me. I understand that it’s a big deal that these people helped liberate the colonies from British rule. But they weren’t gods; they were ordinary, flawed individuals. Jefferson had some good ideas. He also owned slaves. And, while his attitude towards the indigenous peoples of the Americas was not as antagonistic as Andrew Jackson’s, it still rested upon the principles of Eurocentric, cultural assimilation. And from what I read about the various textbook guidelines being pushed in certain states, I doubt these views are being explored. And it’s a shame, because if there’s one thing studying any history, from the United States or elsewhere, can teach us, it’s …
We can do so, so much better. We’ve got a long way to go. In the two centuries since gaining independence, the United States has changed greatly—but in some ways, it and the rest of the world continues to repeat the same old mistakes. Claiming we are superior to the people of the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, that we’ve learned our lessons, is misguided at best and woefully delusional at worst. It will be interesting to see what historians two hundred years hence write about our intolerance and indiscretions.
But I’m still an optimist. Even if I would let myself, I can’t bring myself to yield to despair and the cynical proposition that we have finally achieved that crucial intersection of environmental irresponsibility, cultural apathy, and anxious nationalism that will somehow doom us all. History shows that humans are really, really good at screwing things up. We’re also really, really good at surviving our mistakes, in one form or another.
And armed with the knowledge of—and more importantly, the discussion sparked by—history, we can do better. Schama’s history, like a lot of popular history books, tends to focus on episodic accounts of individuals’ contributions. It’s easier that way; we like narratives and we like protagonists. And while that doesn’t always provide an holistic view of the era, it does recreate one salient feature: individuals can make a difference. I’m trying not to get too trite and inspirational here, and I’m not going to wax poetically about how one person can change the entire world. Chances are, most of us are going to go on to lead fairly unremarkable lives and fade away without too many people remember us. (Though we individuals output more information about ourselves than the entirety of the nineteenth century put out, so much of it these days is digital and therefore ephemeral.) But just because we skim along the surface instead of swimming in the deep doesn’t mean we are unimportant, or that our actions have no effect on this world around us.
The American Future: A History left me with very mixed emotions. On one hand, I had been treated to a greatest hits playlist of some of the United States’ most insular and bonehead moves. On the other hand, as you can tell from the above paragraph, Schama manages to convey that contagious optimism emblematic of the 2008 American presidential election. Schama starts by setting himself a goal of exploring where the United Sates might by going by looking to its past. In this, I think he is successful. That being said, I can’t give this book high marks in every category. Schama is very good at belabouring his points and overstaying his welcome. We spend so much time on certain episodes, such as Montgomery Meigs. I enjoyed it, but it was also a little exhausting. Schama’s use of detail is both a blessing and a curse.
As a Canadian whose grasp of American history is probably rudimentary at best, I certainly found this book informative. It was also helpful in a more general sense, for it illuminates the sources of certain cultural habits Americans often express that can puzzle the rest of the world. We learn about manifest destiny in school, but we don’t necessarily understand its origins—now I kind of do. I recommend this book for non-Americans who are trying to understand why some Americans think and act the way they do. American friends, we know not all of you are crazy, and we’re trying very, very hard to put up with those of you who are. But some of us are running out of patience, and it’s time you step up, mmkay? Because the American future is coming, and I want it to be a good one.
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