Daniel Walker Howe

The real drawback for me of Daniel Walker Howe's early 19th century American history was not the writing, but the narrator. There were times that I wondered if the reader was a computer or a human. So monotone at different points it was almost enough to get me to turn it off. But Howe's writing was good and the topics/tales/history that were told were very interesting. Mix that with the turbulent times and exciting and unbelievable characters Walker Howe had a great canvas with which to work. So good as a book, didn't quite reach that level as a audiobook. Still, I would recommended it, well worth the time.… (més)

This is an outstanding history of the US between 1815 and 1848. Before I started this book, I had thought of this period as a tedious time when too little of interest occurred. As a result of Howe's book, I found this period to be full of exciting and important events. Although the book is 900 pages long (i.e. 300 pages per decade), I found the book to be such an appetizer that I now have a long list of other books I want to read. Howe's coverage is broad with discussions on the political, economic, military and cultural histories of the period as well as good overviews on slavery, native Americans, and Mexican Americans. The book was a pleasure to read.… (més)

Really excellent overview of the period. Howe's obvious distaste for Andrew Jackson is a welcome corrective to our culture's celebration of the first truly, deeply authoritarian president; an overrated blowhard if there ever was one. Likewise, he rescues John Q. Adams and some other important but easily forgotten figures like Winfield Scott from their relative obscurity.

Howe argues that the revolutions in transportation (canals, railroads) and communication (telegraph especially) did more to transform antebellum America than the market revolutions typically put forward by other historians. I have a lot of sympathy with this view, especially since a burgeoning market economy is traceable in America much earlier than the period covered in this book.

The book can repeat itself at times, and Howe places an enormous emphasis on religion, especially on Protestant revivalism. While pointing out that it did a lot in the fight for abolition, Howe is a little too rosy and a little too sympathetic. He yammers on about its importance in the fight for reform movements, but never once mentions any downsides or drawbacks to the overheated religious climate.

I would also be embarrassed to be a professional historian and to have written the following about the US seizure of California:

"In the long run of history, however, in some respects, the seizure of California by the United States did work, as Polk expected, for "the general interests of mankind." For example, it enabled a strong stand [...] against the aggressions of Imperial Japan in the 1940s. God moves in mysterious ways, and He is certainly capable of bringing good out of evil (811)."

Puke. Though Howe spends more time discussing religion than most other historians of the period writing primarily narrative history, the treatments of non-evangelical Protestants, Catholics, and the small but growing free-thought movement are disappointingly breezy by comparison. On a positive note, he spends an appropriate amount of time talking about the growth and development of Mormonism, though he places himself in the odd position of justifying some of its more reprehensible practices, namely polygamy.

All of these are relatively minor squabbles with a masterful work of history.… (més)