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Title: Witness to America : An Illustrated Documentary History of the United States from the Revolution to Today by Stephen Ambrose, Douglas Brinkley ISBN: 0-06-271611-5 Publisher: HarperResource Pub. Date: 01 November, 1999 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3 (11 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Source book for contemporaneous witness to historical events
Comment: You have to understand what this book is before you can decide whether it will be of use to you. It is not a comprehensive history of the United States as told by Stephen Ambrose and Douglass Brinkley. Rather, it is a collection of 170 articles or vignettes on different, mostly well-known, events in American History. These articles are writings contemporaneous with the events described.
There are also many illustrations and photographs and a really interesting audio CD with a number of selections dramatically recreated and some of them audio with the actual participants.
Stephen Ambrose and Douglass Brinkley have based their text on previous edition done by Henry Steele Commager and Allan Nevins. Because these are selections and usually only one perspective is given of each event (editors always have to balance sweep and perspective with limited space), the viewpoints presented may differ with your own. However, I find the value of contemporary perspective quite valuable - especially in teaching my children. I can balance an bias I see with other books and by delving more deeply into the event described. But these articles make a great jumping off point.
There is a bibliography providing the sources of each article, but there is not an index. Because of the nature of this book, the table of contents and the bibliography are probably enough.
Rating: 3
Summary: Interesting Browsing, Could Have Been So Much More
Comment: First, you need to appreciate that this is indeed a "coffee table" book, and is not, never was intended, to be a piece of serious scholarship. It's for browsing, and with that purpose in mind, "Witness to America" offers enough disparate accounts to make it interesting. The book consists of first person narratives at various junctures in U.S. history, broadly organized by the major societal transitions that this nation experienced (e.g., "The Last West" "The Rise of the City, "The Progressive Era," "The Individual Rights Movement"). These strike me as pretty standard categorizations, what you would typically find in most school texts, so ignore the reader comments that allude to some special "agenda" of the editors -- liberal or otherwise. Besides, the editors keep their prefacatory comments to each reading exceedingly brief, and allow the "witnesses" to speak for themselves.
"Witness" does cover broad territory, with many accounts that represent both influential and minor participants in America's development. That's a plus, as it is always enlightening to see how both the big players as well as the everyday citizens interpret events around them. On the other hand, these are all American observers, and you wonder how much more the book might have accomplished had it included "witnesses" from the outside looking in. For example, we get to read General Washington's farewell address to his troops. Wouldn't it have been fascinating to see some of General Cornwallis' observations on the defeat of England and his take on this new nation "born of rebellion?" Similarly, we read Secretary of State Cordell Hull's recollections of the day Pearl Harbor was attacked, and sense his scorn for what seem in his mind to be those "naughty little Japanese ambassadors." Again, what about a view of America from somebody like Admiral Yamamoto?
Okay, maybe I'm being a bit picky here. Including these "outside views" would make a 600+ page book even longer. But then again, so much of U.S. history is cast as how we look at ourselves. The added diversity of other views would have been fascinating in a work like this. So look at "Witness" as the work it was intended to be -- a reference for browsing. Even the editors explain at the beginning of their citation list that they have declined to annotate it because they are serving the interest of general readers, not scholars. Three and one-half stars.
Rating: 5
Summary: A truly inspiring work to be explored
Comment: When we learn of history, either that of the United States or the world, we more often than not hear it in the voice of someone who happens to have a degree in history and was born tens, hundreds, or even thousands of years after the events described in their work. Witness is a unique opportunity to see history through history's eyes. The pieces chosen necessarily reflect upon the times we live in now, but their meanings are left to the readers to ultimately determine for themselves. Ambrose and Brinkley provide a collection that should be passed down to succeeding generations of Americans so that they may have a glimpse of where Americans have been and where they may chose to go in the future.
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Title: To America : Personal Reflections of an Historian by Stephen E. Ambrose ISBN: 0743202759 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 15 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: Crazy Horse and Custer : The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors by Stephen E. Ambrose ISBN: 0385479662 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 01 May, 1996 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: The Making Of America by Robert D Johnston ISBN: 0792269446 Publisher: National Geographic Pub. Date: 01 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment by Stephen E. Ambrose, Richard H. Immerman, Douglas Brinkley ISBN: 1578062071 Publisher: Univ Pr of Mississippi (Trd) Pub. Date: October, 1999 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: EISENHOWER by Stephen E. Ambrose ISBN: 0671747584 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 15 October, 1991 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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