What You'll Learn:
British historian Paul Johnson begins his lengthy treatment of America’s history with a dedication “…to the people of America—strong, outspoken, intense in their convictions, sometimes wrong-headed but always generous and brave, with a passion for justice no nation has ever matched.” A History of the American People is a survey of some of the forces and challenges that have shaped a people over the past four centuries. The following captures just a handful of Johnson’s most interesting snapshots of American life at various junctures along the nation’s journey.
Key Insights:
- To understand the formation of what we now know as the United States of America, we need to go back further than the Founding Fathers.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson was the first American intellectual to decisively reject Europe’s sense of cultural superiority.
- The South’s loss to the Union armies was next to inevitable.
- Steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie did more to impact the United States than any president from Lincoln to Roosevelt.
- Nothing did more to alter America’s cultural-political landscape than drastic changes in media in the 1960s.
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the puppet at the center of his power-hungry father’s scheming.
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