Just started reading this the other day, and so far I can highly recommend it. Covers many of the topics that drift thru this forum from time to time.
One tiny (and common) flaw so far: a tendency to use "miraculous" without remembering what that word means. I know everyone does it -- but it bugs me in precisely the same way "very unique" does!
Bryson does a brilliant job of showing how so many American legends and traditions are spin-offs from imperfect journalism and spurious advertising. He points out so many fantasies we've picked up from pop media, how many inaccuracies from bad textbooks, and how many misleading implications in the language we use to understand day-to-day life.
And somehow he remains patriotic about it.
It seems like good history; he shows how one event influences another -- cause and effect -- and avoids psychoanalyzing a whole country as if it shared one common Uni-Mind or one "spirit of the age." Bleh!
But doesn't he paint an unfamiliar picture of American history, contradicting a lot of common assumptions?
Ah, welcome to Historiography - one of the major points they drill into you as an upper division history major.
As much as we'd like to think that all that we read in a history text is a facutal account of something that has happened in the past, the very fact that it has been transcribed by a (fallable) human means that what has been recorded may or may not be totally accurate, or may favor one point over another. (Famous examples? That study where 10 blind people are asked to describe an elephant, and you get 10 different descriptions. Or See: Kurosawa's "ROSHOMON")
So, exists Historiography - the history of history. When doing some sort of historical research, you also study the historiography of your sources, (usually, you'll be using secondary sources, ie - a history text, say, as opposed to eye-witnesses, or some other first hand account.) - and you will factor in who wrote it, if they had a leaning that would affect their interpretation of the facts, if the item was written at a point in history that would effect the tone of the work, etc.
It's why you see a back and forth over the cause of the civil war - some will insist to their dying day that it was primarily based on slavery, with facts to back up their statements, while others will insist that slavery had nothing to do with it, and will have facts to back up thier claims.
Now, having said this, American history, as it was taught for the most part, followed one line of thought for a long time, that, being blunt here, made American history a bit more sugar coated that it may have actually been. This is not a judgement call, nor an unpatriotic statement. The first historian to make a major mark on writing a more accuarate, "warts and all" history of America was Howard Zinn, who wrote a tome called "The People's History of America" - a fine read that's not the damning inditment of America that you may think, but rather, a more honest approach that shows the bad along with the good. This came as a revelation to many - and has influenced a number of books, such as the incredibly poorly named "Lies My Teacher Told Me", which I dismiss just based on the title alone - (leads the leader to believe that high school history teachers are in on some masonic level conspriicy to white-wash the history of America. Baloney - the teachers work with the facts they have, and do the best they can. Tough luck for them that they didn't get Zinn in college, but enough with the self-rightious finger pointing, no?) - so, my point in all this - if the facts in Bryson's tome seem unfamiliar, it's possible that he's working from different aspects of the historiography than you are, and it might be worth a look to go over some of his soruces (found in his endnotes!) to either dispute or verify his facts. You will either learn something new, or reveal some false facts - it's the joy of being a historian!
OK. All those years in college, a degree in history, and I finally found a use for it all - to help someone get through a Bill Bryson book. I want my 20's back!!!
I had to return it before I was done because of the library's draconian policies on new books (and yes, I can say that because I'm an employee of said library), but I enjoyed what I read. I adore the part where Bryson posits aliens showing up and congratulating us on our fine horses.
Speaking of annoyingly misused words, number one on my hit parade is literally. Fewer and fewer people actually mean literally when they say literally. Our library board president said the library was literally "a bridge from the present to the past" during her dedication speach. I wanted to grab the mike from her hand and thump her with it...literally.
I adore the part where Bryson posits aliens showing up and congratulating us on our fine horses.
******
Echoing the "Squire of Gothos" episode of STAR TREK. 'Course, that was something of a problematic episode, since the Enterprise was supposed to be 900 light years from Earth, yet Trelayne was viewing Napoleonic France!
Nope. Specific reference was made to Earth being 900 light years distant, and Trelayne's chambers being a representation of what someone would see with a powerful enough viewer.
STAR TREK was still figuring itself out at that point.
