As a first
year English language & literature student I had quite high expectations
about my American history course, including the text book. Why? I knew
absolutely nothing about American history. And so I decided that I would take
this seriously and do my readings.
When I
discovered that the book was a 900 page monster, I was not exactly happy. But
as I started reading, I was actually surprised. Getting through the first
chapter was a horror, but with each finished chapter the reading got easier.
And even though the book seemed really complicated and demanding a lot of
focus, these factors gradually disappeared and in the end I found the book even
enjoyable.
The book is
divided into chapters, each with its own subchapters. Along the sides of the
text important names and keywords are given, which is very helpful for
orientation. Each chapter has a summarizing conclusion and a list of
sources/additional readings at the end. The book also has some appendices,
unfortunately I only had the individual chapters. It’s very nice that the book
doesn’t give you only “its” point of view on history but includes articles
about how the perspective changed over time.
To sum it
up – yes. I would recommend it. For those who have never heard anything about
the American history and also for the ones who have but want to learn something
more (also it's a very good one for increasing reading speed :). You probably won’t like all the chapters (I hated all the ones describing
wars and the ones about Wild West – booooooring), but you can always skip the
ones you don’t enjoy, right? Given that it’s not a compulsory reading, which
was my case, well...
2 comments:
I'm so sad that we did not have this book for our compulsory readings as well! It sounds a bit better than the book we had to read. And I feel so ashamed I did not read it. Bad, bad Fay not reading for her studies! :D
naughty, naughty! ;) but let's face it - as interesting as the book might be, it'll never be as good as Jeffrey's lectures :)
Post a Comment