A Short History of the United States

How do you cover all of U.S. history in around 10 hours? Oliver Wyman adopts a brisk, breathless style for Remini's primer. Remini crams a lot of facts into his brief history. Although Wyman provides meaningful inflection as he narrates, there's hardly any new material or insight. Wyman's narration is lively, and he delivers a lot of information as clearly as possible. Given the fast pace, though, listeners aren't likely to retain much. Recent events get more coverage--as well as Wyman's impressions of figures like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. The history takes listeners up to the beginning of 2008, and the looming recession. History buffs are likely to crave more specialized books. J.A.S. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

August 4, 2008
To write a thorough, balanced history of the United States in under 400 pages is no mean feat. Remini, professor of history emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a National Book Award winner for his work on Andrew Jackson, deftly wraps his expertise and deep knowledge of his subject in stripped-down prose that provides everything a casual (or bewildered) reader needs to know about the United States from the first English colonists until the beginning of 2008. Remini's final chapters are slightly rushed and his judgments too general to be useful, but these flaws are easily overshadowed by his masterful middle sections focusing on the 19th century (his scholarly specialty). In contrast to some surveys of American history, like Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States
or William Bennett's America: The Last Best Hope,
Remini delivers an objective narrative of this nation's history that readers of all political stripes will appreciate. 16 pages of b&w illus., 14 maps.