A Little History of the United States

July 20, 2015
Historian Davidson (coauthor of The American Nation) opens this smooth overview of 500 years of American history, beginning with Columbus’s arrival, with an engaging premise, arguing that we all make our own history pieced together out of personal memories, which in turn become the warp and weft of the cloth of history. With those pieces Davidson stitches together the people and events that created a country united “under a banner of freedom and equality.” Crafting a “little” narrative requires the skills of a seasoned historian, and Davidson accomplishes it through a combination of structure and approach. The book is divided into 40 brief, easily digestible chapters composed in a conversational style akin to a historical fireside chat. To organize hundreds of years of events, Davidson keeps his focus on politics, economics, and war, which allows him to demonstrate that Americans’ dedication to freedom and equality was not uncontested. Because of the vastness of the continent and of the many people who lived there, freedom and equality meant different things at different times. This is particularly evident in the chapters on the Civil War, the Progressive movement, and the post-WWII movement for civil rights. Davidson subscribes to American exceptionalism, which, in light of his own material, may strike some readers as Pollyannaish. Illus.