U.S. History
At 1052 pages, "U.S. History" is nothing if not comprehensive. Maybe comprehensive to a fault. Although it fulfills its duty as a history textbook by including fairly detailed recountings of events (with some exceptions to come), the editors are guilty of including large chunks of information in the precolonial and colonial eras that are tangential at best to the story of U.S. History. One example is the entirety of Chapter 2. It’s called “Early Globalization in the Atlantic World,” but it’s not. The entire chapter is largely background information on contemporary European political and cultural history in order to give us context for when we later read about what was happening in the Americas.
There were some glaring inaccuracies, mostly concentrating in the section on “West Africa and the Role of Slavery.” The text mentions that “West Africa . . . was linked to the rise and diffusion of Islam.” This statement is wildly vague and inaccurate. How can a region be "linked" to a religion that doesn’t reach it until the 8th Century? Are the editors not aware of the rise of the pre-Islamic Nok civilizations and their terra cotta figures and ironworking? The state of Ghana likewise exploited the gold-for-salt trade using Berber and Tuareg intermediaries before Islam had made it to West Africa. And what of the powerful non-Muslim states of West Central Africa, Kongo and Angola? Do they not merit a mention?
A few sentences down, the text claims “Until about 600 CE, most Africans were hunter-gatherers.” This sentence was actually flabbergasting. The Agricultural Revolution hit West Africa at least as early as the second millennium B.C.E., and the Bantu peoples began their spread from Cameroon to over the entirety of southern Africa -- bringing agriculture and iron-working technology -- soon after, eventually replacing the hunter-gatherer culture of southern Khoisan speakers. There were large groups of people who were hunter-gatherers in 600 CE to be sure, as there large groups of pastoralists, but this sentence seriously decontextualizes the actual on-the-ground reality.
There are more. In the very same paragraph, to say that “Sub-Saharan Africans had little experience in maritime matters. Most of the population lived away from the coast, which is connected to the interior by five main rivers” robs the teacher of the chance to teach students about the Liberian-area Kru people, who ferried African American colonists back and forth from the coasts because their ships couldn’t face the rocky shore. And this would be a direct tie-in to American history. Of course there were hundreds of groups who lived near the ocean, but there was never economic or population-pressure motivation to explore transoceanic exploration. Suffice it to say, the research on this section left quite a bit to be desired and is in need of a general rewrite. I would say that this is one of the book’s more immediate concerns. The following section on African slavery, however, is excellent, particularly the connection between the construction of race with slavery. Although a section on parallel social institutions among Amerindian groups and on serfdom in Europe in this chapter would give the chapter more overall thematic balance.
Much as the text gives too much primacy to the role of Islam in the construction of political and cultural cohesion in West Africa, it gives too little credit to Muslim culture in the contribution it made to European culture, particularly the Renaissance, in its treatment of the events in sections 2.1 and later in the flowering of the Enlightenment in section 4.4. It ignores how the Moors brought algebra and Greek and Roman philosophy back to Europe, which led to the Enlightenment. This is inaccurate in that it gives students a warped view of the role Islamic culture has played in American culture.
The text calls the Dutch Republic “Holland” on page 50. Holland was but one province in the Netherlands, although people of the time called the Dutch Republic “Holland” in the same way some people think Manhattan is “New York City.”
I was very impressed that the book gave the definition of the word “slave” on page 15. That is a rarely mentioned but important history.
The text is largely up-to-date, using the most accurate terminology for its historical referents. It uses the word “tribe” rather carelessly,(p. 16) though, without going into the history of that term, given that it was used by European anthropologists to (often inaccurately) classify and compartmentalize the ethnic groups they encountered in Africa and the Americas. A more useful term for classification would be “ethnic group.”
The wording of the text is clear, and achieves a not-unreasonable level of grammatical and syntactical complexity for college students.
The framework and terminology are consistent.
The modularity is fine, but the section titles are more confusing than helpful. It would be preferable to have section titles that use terms students will be familiar with. Rather than titling chapters “Religious Upheavals in the Developing Atlantic World,” title it “Protestant Reformation and Catholicism.” Instead of “The United States Goes Back to War,” use “The War of 1812.” That way when students are looking for a topic they want to find in the Table of Contents, they’ll be able to navigate it faster.
The organization of the first four chapters is inexhaustingly Eurocentric. Pages 34 - 39 and 42 - 46 are completely out of place in a U.S. history book, for instance. All of the information on those pages can be explained with quick in-text references in the sections that really have to do with America rather than long paragraphs in their own section. Chapter 4 on the British Empire is completely unnecessary. This is definitely a way the text can cut down on its word count. The chapter just seems like an excuse to tell European history. All that needs to be said in a U.S. history book about that period is covered in Chapter 3, which, by the way, is excellent, particularly the attention given to St. Augustine, Santa Fe, and Bacon’s Rebellion. The text sings when focusing on regional histories. The section on New France is extraneous, however.
The breaking up of the 1960s Countercultural Movement into two eras seems to rob the moment of its full contextual impact. The political issues from, say, p. 866 “Kennedy the Cold Warrior” directly led to the social upheavals covered right up to page 903, the beginning of Nixon’s story. That period represented a significant break with previous notions of American identity and should have its own chapter with a distinctive thematic focus.
There were great delights. I loved the inclusion of a section on transcendentalism and was pleasantly surprised to see a section on the flowering of antebellum Utopian communities.
On the online version, there should be page numbers. The only way to refer a student to a particular sentence is by section number, and those are too long. If going over a passage in class, it will take too long for everybody to find it.
In the pdf version, the table contents have hyperlinks that take you right to the section, but there’s no way to go back to the Table of Contents from the different section. This will cause a delay, particularly if a student goes to the wrong section, they can’t go right back up to the Table of Contents. There should be a way back.
The text contains this sentence on page 20: “In 1054, the eastern branch of Christianity, led by the Patriarch of Constantinople (a title that because roughly equivalent to the western Church’s pope), established its center in Constantinople and adopted the Greek language for its services.” I think the word “was” was supposed to go there instead of the word “because.”
Rather than devoting so much of Chapter 2 to European history, there were relevant things happening in the Americas that the editor could have chosen to include. What about the legendary battles between maroon/Carib confederations against both the French and the British on Saint Vincent and Dominica? What about Spanish and Portuguese encounters with Arawaks and Caribs in the Lesser Antilles and the construction of racial characteristics amongst these ethnic groups? These are events that had actual cultural impact in Americas, as those populations directly comprised the American cultural mosaic. In Chapter 1, black and brown leaders are consistently left out of the narrative. In the one sentence discussing the inheritors of the gold-for-salt trade, the Songhay, where is the mention of Askia Muhammad Toure, who founded it, or Sunni Ali Ber, who led its hostile takeover? What of Amerindian heroes like Tupac Yupanqui, Pachacuti, or Montezuma? Do they not merit a mention? And, not unimportantly, why is it that only European leaders get honorifics? The text makes the effort the mention that Richard was named the “the Lionheart,” Charles Martel “the Hammer,” and Henry “the Navigator.” More information on Songhay or the Kongo would have allowed for mention of Askiya the Great or Affonso the Great. Black and brown leaders have cool nicknames, too. This is exactly why we see so many studies of black and brown children in America who don’t feel they have role models. We force feed them navigators and hammers with whom they have trouble identifying. Eurocentrism is about seeing the world from one perspective, and ignoring the possibility that your reader does not share it. Opening up a section with a sentence like “The year 622 brought a new challenge to Christendom” (page 29) immediately puts “Christendom” in the role of protagonist and Islam in the role of antagonist. As if it were Islam’s mission to destroy Christianity. The text does not explore at all Muhammad’s attempts to bring his vision to both Jewish and Christian leaders in Mecca, that he wanted to unify the faiths. The text is largely graphic in its depictions of horrors on both sides of the Crusades, but it continues an ugly narrative in American society that Islam is a force to be conquered by Christians.
Please address the issues on African and Amerindian history and I will be happy to re-review!