Best Source for Publications that Correctly Explain American History?

[ArfinGreebly]

History Can Be Strange

For example:

Do you realize that if we'd LOST the Revolutionary War that we'd be speaking English today, instead of American?

 

[roo_ster]

guitarguy:

The author who best fits your criteria is Richard Brookhiser. He has written several short, concise biographies of the founders: G Washington, A Hamilton, G Morris, the Adamses, & other books. Start with G Washington.

They are not laundry lists of every minute action of the subject or dissertations on their philosophies, though some of this material is necessary to the telling of their stories. They are much more moral biographies that tell why they behaved and believed as they did.

I can not recommend Brookhiser enough:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?WRD=richard+brookhieser&z=y&cds2Pid=9481

For an overview of American History, the place to start is with Paul Johnson's A History of the American People:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9780060930349&itm=1

Good luck and most of all, have fun. It is one heckuva tale.

 

[roo_ster]

Mostly what has changed is that historians don't buy into the whole "great man" theory of history anymore. Washington was an important figure (for instance) but if he had never existed at all, it is most likely that some other figure would have emerged and that history wouldn't be much different. History tends to develop in a predictable way. It is VERY rare to look at a historical movement and conclude that the whole thing wouldn't have happened at all except for one man.

It's like the potential energy in a tightly compressed spring. You can push it down to the very bottom of its travel and carefully lock it in that position. But that potential is still there, pushing against the block. Waiting for its time to come sproinging out. A lot of history is like that spring. Things build up over time in one direction until some person or some group of people release it. Just studying who finally removed the block ignores how all that pressure got there in the first place.

There is some validity in what you write, in that changing conditions have an effect on attitudes and new technologies can release some potentialities, et cetera. The "great man" theory does not describe all.

But, I call "bunk" on the whole "predictable development of history" and its kissing cousins. The most prominent popularizer of this whole "march of history" & "historical inevitability" nonsense was Karl Marx.

Marx never let fact penetrate his intellect, never stepping foot into a factory and deriding socialist workers who had a better grasp of the reality of their situation. Marx's whole historiography was based on adolescent fantasy seasoned with Hegel & Nietzsche. I find it hard to believe folks still drag around the hoary theories and derivative theories of Marx. "Scientific" materialism? Feh.

If one is still in a quandry about the "great man" effect on history, a perusal of Charles Murray's Human Accomplishment ought to settle the matter for them. Pretty much most of human accomplishment is done by a very few while the rest of us are free riders, time servers, and maintainers.

(For example, take Tiger Woods. The statistic I heard on the radio was that the distance between him (#1 guy) and the #2 guy in the golf game is equal to the distance between the #2 guy and the #64 guy.)

 

[Thin Black Line]

Do you realize that if we'd LOST the Revolutionary War that we'd be speaking English today, instead of American?

Possibly English with a Southern accent? The separation from England would
have still happened at some point.