I'm now a college student and honestly it feels like I barely know anything about history, for anywhere. It feels like every year they used the same exact curriculum over and over, cramming in centuries of information of the same countries and their time periods into a single year.
So I want a book or a few that goes over good detail of the US as a whole over the centuries. It seems like a lot of history books I can find are just specifically about the colonial period or the period after which is also important but I want to get a better understanding of the US as a whole over most of its 250 years if possible.
From settlement to independence to the Trail of Tears, the decades after, the golden era, the downfall that started with Reagan. Everything in between
Bonus points if there's anything extra that focuses on the Pacific Northwest, I want to learn my home region better.
The only American history book I've read so far is Crabgrass Frontier, which is about the history of US suburbanization/urban planning. A good read.
by ZeLlamaMaster
14 Comments
*American History: Connecting with the Past* 15th Edition by Alan Brinkley.
A People’s History of the United States
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen.
On Freedom by Tim Snyder is more of a philosophy/political science book, but it’s written by a historian, so he does an excellent job tracing the causes of our current moment back through history. My only complaint is that he still got a bit of the Founders fetish
I don’t know about all of American history but I feel like War Is A Racket by Smedley Butler should be required reading for understanding the US.
I really recommend “bury my heart at wounded knee” it’s an out the history of the United States from the perspective of the native Americans perspective.
Stamped From The Beginning, which is about racism in America and White Trash, about classism. Read them together and they will change the way you think.
Undaunted Courage by Stephen E. Ambrose will get you a highly readable account of the Lewis and Clark expedition.
Facing the Mountain by Daniel Hames Brown is an excellent account of the Japanese-American experience in WWII, home front and frontline.
*Fantasyland* by Kurt Anderson, which talks about how Americans’ focus on religion and hyper-individualism has had huge ramifications over the decades.
*We the Women* by Norah O’Donnell, which is American history from women’s point of view.
*Myth America* is a collection of essays debunking common misconceptions about American history.
*1491* by Charles Mann is about America before Colombus arrived.
Erik Larson has good nonfiction books, some about American history, that cover specific topics. His most famous is *Devil in the White City*, which is about the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 – and the serial killer who had set up shop nearby. *Killers of the Flower Moon* by David Grann is about a conspiracy in 1920s Oklahoma to steal land from the Osage tribe.
-Season of the Witch by David Talbot (discusses San Francisco in the 60s/70s)
-The Fifties by David Halberstam
-A Hard Rain by Frye Gaillard (discusses the 1960s as a whole)
-American Midnight by Adam Hochschild (discusses America during Woodrow Wilson’s presidency, there are a shocking amount of similarities to today)
-The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman
I absolutely loved How to Hide an Empire, it’s basically a brief and accessible overview of American imperialism. I learned SO much
American Pageant. No one book can tell the whole history of any country, but this one is a really great start
*The Jakarta method* by Vincent Bevins
I just finished Dreams of El Dorado: A History of the American West by H.W. Brands. Really enjoyed it as an overview.