Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History: 1585-1828 | Walter A. Mcdougall

Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History: 1585-1828 | Walter A. Mcdougall | Excellent Research - Great Writing

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Freedom Just Aroun...

	Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History: 1585-1828 Walter A. Mcdougall Harper Perennial, 2005 - 656 pages average customer review:based on 11 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A powerful reinterpretation of the founding of America by a Pulitzer Prize?winning historian.

The creation of the United States of America is the central event of the past four hundred years," states Walter McDougall in his preface to Freedom Just Around the Corner. With this statement begins McDougall's most ambitious, original, and uncompromising of histories. McDougall marshals the latest scholarship and writes in a style redolent with passion, pathos, and humour in pursuit of truths often obscured in books burdened with political slants.

With an insightful approach to the nearly 250 years spanning America's beginnings, McDougall offers his readers an understanding of the uniqueness of the "American character" and how this character has shaped the wide ranging course of historical events. McDougall explains that Americans have always been in a unique position of enjoying "more opportunity to pursue their ambitions?an any other people in history." Throughout Freedom Just Around the Corner the character of the American people shines, a character built out of a freedom to indulge in the whole panoply of human behaviour. The genius behind the success of the United States is founded on the complex, irrepressible American spirit.

A grand narrative rich with new details and insights about colonial and early national history, Freedom Just Around the Corner is the first instalment of a trilogy that will eventually bring the story of America up to the present day, a story epic, bemusing, and brooding.

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The Textbook You Wish You'd Had in School

Did we need one more history of the US? Even McDougall isn't so sure about that. But he manages to find a path that hasn't been beaten down.

Where the tendency of American historians has been to find One Big Peg on which to hang their histories, McDougall pitches a big tent and tries hard to fit everybody under it. He works hard to tell the whole story without trying to shape it to lead to a particular moral.

For example, McDougall's approach to America's Christian roots. He doesn't try to minimize them and pretend that they weren't really there or didn't really matter, but neither does he try to elevate them into a thesis about Americans being God's Chosen People. He acknowledges them and presents them thoroughly without trying to shape them to prove something.

If McDougall has a point of view, it is that of a mild cynic. His one thesis is that Americans have always been hustlers in both senses of the word-- hard workers and scammers. This gives the work a tendency to shy away from Big Deep Ideas and philosophical cant. Where many historians have tried to layer American history in fancy clothes (This cigar is really a symbol of the repressed oppression of growing economic anti-humanistic struggling), this book leaves the impression of a more direct view (This is a cigar).

Beyond that, most of his organizational tools are about analysis rather than interpretation. His language is relaxed, cleasr and sometimes even colloquial, and his reach is considerable. There's a great deal of information here, but explained and organized so that the reader comes away with a clear view of a large picture.

If I were a high school history teacher, I'd be begging for sets of this book to teach from. A great and clear read.

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Excellent Research - Great Writing

This is obviously a well researched book. Mr. McDougall does not only a good job of presenting the reader with the actions and prevailing sentiments leading up to the American Revolution, but he also gives more in-depth explanations than you'd find in 'standard' American history books. The motives for revolution were far more complex and varied than the popular conception in this country. Additionally, Mr. McDougall reminds the reader that independence from Britain was not an overwhelming choice for all members of the thirteen colonies. And the author traces the backgrounds of the people who make up those colonies to provide the reason for this. My only (minor) problems with the book were that the included maps did not live up to the quality of the text and I think the author tries a little to hard to make his point that America was built by 'hustlers.' But this is certainly a book I highly recommend for anyone interested in the forming of the country. For a real treat, read it in conjunction with Alan Taylor's American Colonies.
Also recommended: American Colonies by Alan Taylor, Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow, Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose.

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Informative history

The book is very informative and beautifully written. It tells of our history before "it all started" and encompasses every event that took place and had an impact on the foundation of America, the United States. I'm very pleased with its reading!

Balanced, lively, easy to read but very complete

This is very simply the best one volume history available of early American history. McDougall covers the time from 1585 to 1828. In other words, he starts his story in England prior to the foundation of the American colonies and takes it down to Andrew Jackson.

I can not praise this book too much. It does everything you want a history book to do. First, it covers the subject, in a way that a total beginner could follow but which teaches a great deal to those of us already well versed in American history. Second, it has no obvious political bias. Too much historical writing these days -- yes, I am thinking about Howard Zinn -- is marred by gross and silly modern biases. McDougall is neither a rah-rah wave the flag kind of guy, nor is he an American-is-the-root-of-all-evil kind of guy. He just lays out the facts, the good, the bad and the ugly. He assumes that the reader has some brains and can make his or her own moral judgments. It is SUCH a relief to read history without heavy moralizing.

Finally, the book is lively and easy to read. McDougall has a very non-academic style. He uses a good deal of slang and informal language. Some might find it undignified, but I found it a welcome relief to the usual turgid pomposity of academic writing. To me, his writing is clear, simple and to the point. It is also often funny. A very good book, and a very good read.

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Do We Really Need to Know ALL This?

Although McDougal has written exhaustively about the early history of the colonies and United States (exploding some myths and revealing some shocking details), he also tended to exhaust this reader, at least, with unnecessary minutiae. Admittedly, some insights proved enlightening to the particular subject at hand, but although his writing style is inviting, his penchant for detail certainly does not invite me to plow through his coming two volumes--this one being over 600 pages if 87 pages of endnotes (17 percent of the book) are included.

There is SO much information to deal with. One revelation that kept popping up in the book was the seemingly irrational need to be a Freemason. It seems that anyone who was ANYONE had to be a member of this secretive, mysterious, childishly-ritualistic society/fraternity of "ancient origins" that functioned as an old-boys' network and good-luck-charm combo. We're talking Lewis and Clark, John Jacob Astor, Paul Revere, Absalom Jones (priest of the African American Episcopal Church; the African lodge), Thomas Jefferson, (pro-slavery, anti-Indian) Andrew Jackson (not that some of the others were much different), George Washington and most of the state and national politicians and many, many more with aspirations of (or actually) being influential or rich--and this continues to this day.

(How about these tidbits? A married dedicated Quaker/Friend was supposed to have sex only for purposes of procreation--one wonders how often their dedication was sorely tested. And the Puritans didn't allow sex on the Sabbath--between husband and wife, of course--because that was "working" on the Sabbath.)

Another impression (fact) I came away with is that wide political chicanery and shenanigans have been going on since before the beginning of our nation--and also continue to this day! (Of course, this is really NOT news--or endemic to the colonies/United States.)

This nation was built via philosophical arguments, valor, jingoism, racism, equality (for some), land-grabbing (from Britain, Spain, France, native Americans and others)--and the list goes on. And in spite of all these contradictions, the US grew into one of the best republics in the world. And the political, religious, environmental, international, and financial clashes continue. Since the USA survived a very formidable colonial era, it is reasonable to assume it will survive the present dilemmas.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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