As a part of a 10 volume set of books, all dealing with the creation of the United States, this book tells the history of the US after the revolution. The book is written with a tone that suggests someone is telling you a story about how he US was created. This makes the book easily digestible and a good preliminary source to consult before doing research. In terms of the historical contents this book covers, it does not demonstrate an uneven amount of bias towards the atrocities that have occurred during American history. The book does focus on elements of our history such as voting and slavery and presents critical thinking questions to students about them, which is very good and necessary. However, I am not entirely pleased by the depiction of the founding fathers. For example, the book describes washington as a strong political leader, which was not the case. Washington only had strength in the realm of military leadership and really didn't want to participate in politics at all. Aside from these types of details this is a good book and very enjoyable to read. ( )

Book 4 of A History of US (or, as they say in Britain, A History of THEM) looks at the United States from 1789 through 1850. Ms. Hakim covers the development of our government under the new constitution, looking at the contributions of our first seven presidents--and then skimming over the next seven. She speaks of the arrival of the Industrial Revolution on these shores and of the drive of our population to the west. She also gives a lot of coverage to the lives and events of America's native and black populations. Having read through this era of American history in the past few years, I kept getting the feeling that she was rushing through too fast. But in the end, I realized that she pretty much covered all the basics. She could have written a book that was ten times as long, but then that would defeat the purpose of covering the entire history of our country.
--J. ( )

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