Not sure if this is Patriotic, but it is texty...
Written: Jan 05 '09
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Product Rating:
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Pros: complete, lots of interesting dates and details
Cons: relatively boring material, sometimes mindnumbing
The Bottom Line: While the book has a lot of excellent information, it is only good in short bouts of reading. It is however, quite complete.
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| biscuitfarmer's Full Review: William J. Bennett and John T.E. Cribb Jr. - The A... |
Those that truly know me realize just how much I love to learn, especially about the history of the world. I really like to know about the world around me and how things came to be, so I seek out a lot of information. American history is one of the areas of history that is particularly appealing to me as the country is relatively new and we are taught so much about it, however there are so many other stories that have never truly been told. It would be these stories that I am really looking to discover and because of that, I own numerous books that talk about the lost history on a variety of different aspects of our country and its growth throughout time.
However, when I start to consider the United States, I always back track to those countries that came here and helped to found this country as the country we know today. Regardless of why I do it, the information that I have learned through the years is incredibly interesting and has become an excellent source of conversation in numerous occassions as I pull it from the back of my mind.
THE AMERICAN PATRIOT'S ALMANAC
The basic premise of The American Patriot's Alamanac is that it is a collection of anything and everything that could be considered to be history and also somewhat patriotic in a sense. Now, for the purpose of this book, it isn't really a direct history of how the country came to be. This is more of a collection of facts and information that you probably wouldn't have seen together in any other fashion.
The book in my opinion has no real rhyme or reason. It has no real order to it, and seems to simply be nothing more than a jumble of information. While it is organized into sections, most of them really don't make sense together and sometimes seem to be created just as a place to store somewhat related information.
One of my favorite portiosn of the book that I found to be interesting is the collection of flags from the Revolutionary War. There are several pictures of different flags along with a little bit of history about the flag itself. This is a somewhat small section of the book, but it does go to show that there was a lot of pride during the war and that many times there were much smaller groups that operated somewhat independently from the whole, which I imagine would mostly be due to the difficulty in communication over distances.
Other topics in the book, include The Origins of Baseball, The Hubble Space Telescope, 50 American movies, where the DC in Washington DC came from, several patriotic American songs, such as American the Beautiful, famous documents in American history, the first Thanksgiving, bloody Sunday, etc. There are so many topics in this book that it is laid out over 365 days of American history. So you can easily read the book one day at a time and figure out something new and interesting.
MY THOUGHTS
While the book is entertaining and has a great deal of information, the book is nothing more than information. The stories can be somewhat bland at times and often are simply in the book because it would be incomplete as an alamanac without them. For example, we all know the American songs, but it doesn't make for interesting reading. The same is true with a lot of the dates in history, the American documents and the like. They are in there purely for completeness above all else. However, if you overlook those areas of the book, the rest is pretty interesting and can be somewhat entertaining to read.
I must say that this isn't one of those books that will grip you and cause you to sit around reading it. I found that I almost had to force myself to read it, but once I got going I was good to read through a day or two at a time. Much more than that and you feel like you are studying for an exam.
I would say that if you are interested in knowing more about the United States and really want to hear about it in a relatively dry manner, then this book is perfect for you. It is complete, and that is the main thing. It wasn't apparently written to be as entertaining as complete so I really stress considering that when you check it out for yourself.
Recommended:
Yes
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Member: Clacky McSnackens
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