America, Empire of Liberty: A New History

by David Reynolds

It was Thomas Jefferson who envisioned the United States as a great 'empire of liberty.' In the first new one-volume history in two decades, David Reynolds takes Jefferson's phrase as a key to the saga of America - helping unlock both its grandeur and its paradoxes. He examines how the anti-empire of 1776 became the greatest superpower the world has seen, how the country that offered liberty and opportunity on a scale unmatched in Europe nevertheless founded its prosperity on the labour of black slaves and the dispossession of the Native Americans. He explains how these tensions between empire and liberty have often been resolved by faith - both the evangelical Protestantism that has energized U.S. politics since the foundation of the nation and the larger faith in American righteousness that has impelled the country's expansion. Reynolds' account is driven by a compelling argument which illuminates our contemporary world.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, American, Politics, The United States Of America, Audiobook

1036 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 19, 2009

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database. For more information please see David Reynolds.

A Professor of International History and a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge. He was awarded a scholarship to study at Dulwich College, then Cambridge and Harvard universities. He has held visiting posts at Harvard, Nebraska and Oklahoma, as well as at Nihon University in Tokyo and Sciences Po in Paris. He was awarded the Wolfson History Prize, 2004, and elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2005. He teaches and lectures both undergraduates and postgraduates at Cambridge University, specialising in the two world wars and the Cold War. Since October 2013 he has been Chairman of the History Faculty at Cambridge.

Reviews

[Dimitri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Does a British author a better American history book make?
Not necessarily, but even if it is not the best, this is one of the better one-volume histories.

The focus per era is rather traditional. The different patterns of the early colonies such as Massachusetts & Pennsylvania, the Revolution as a consequence (!) of the French and Indian war, the (anti) Jeffersonian elements of political culture, the early drive West, the development of railroads and industry, Civil War and reconstruction, yet more railroads and industry, three more wars, the Civil Rights movements...

The Cold War era tends to play by the rhythm of the U.S. Presidencies, for some reason. Between Grant & Teddy Roosevelt, the Oval Office was written off as 'populated by non-entities'.
In other words, nothing much I hadn't heard previously- personally - but there is some rehabilitation for 'bad' presidents such as Carter & Reagan.

As befits the 21st century, blacks & Indians are not delegated to mere footnotes. They are integral to the tone of the book, as are women's rights : America is an Empire of Liberty. The question is : Liberty TO [the pursuit of happiness, 1776) or Liberty FROM (Fear, F.D.R., 1941) , Liberty for WHOM? This definition has shifted back & forth, not seldom as a justification of inconvenient truths.

[Tim Pendry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a first rate readable single volume of the history of the United States, fully annotated with references, which takes account of recent revisionism without polemic. The author is English, although a specialist in American history.

The book may be a tad more useful for non-Americans seeking some sense of the broad sweep of the US story than it might be for Americans who know its stories from school.

His theme (because some theme is necessary to cover over 400 years of history in under 600 pages) is that the United States can be defined by the three-way tension of its religious faith in a secular political framework, its expansionism and its particular and fraught ideology of liberty.

Understanding this complex interplay of aspirations is required if non-Europeans are to get any understanding of why Americans appear so sure in their moral rectitude when the bulk of humanity sees nothing (at least in recent years) but inconsistent blundering and hypocrisy.

The truth is that the Americans and the rest of the world are talking different languages and this history helps to tell us why. Although Reynolds does not make it specific, US history, after the colonial age, seems to fall into three very broad phases.

Reynolds deals with the first and the third well but he somewhat skips over the second of which more in a moment. There is an argument that we are now just entering a fourth phase – of which more, also, in a moment.

The first phase is about the lengthy resolution of an accident. When the British withdrew, they left behind two very different and competing cultures that should perhaps have been allowed to go their separate ways if a clash within the new State was not to be averted.

There was, first, a slave-owning plantation culture in the South and, second, a more sophisticated proto-industrial liberal culture in the North, both competing for the fruits of expansion westwards.

The whole business was held together on a wing and a prayer by Northern acceptance of the domination of the Southern aristocracy in politics and the lack of interest of Southerners in extending rather than retaining their very peculiar institution of slavery.

Reynolds is very good on this era in which those who wanted a free aristocratic republic competed with more radical democrats from the North and then faced evangelical religious pressure (the same impetus that has gone sour in recent American politics) to contain and even abolish the basis for their wealth.

The tensions built up reaching a critical cultural point in the 1850s. A liberal intellectual renaissance on the East Coast fuelled constant challenges to the status quo.

It ended inevitably in the South seeking secession and the North engaging in what amounts to an imperial determination to keep the South bound to a piece of paper, the American Constitution. But the rise of the US as major global power was not inevitable.

The South was doomed only because the British Empire failed to come to its aid, thus giving the superior industrial strength of the North a chance to overwhelm it in campaigns of unparalleled ferocity (and atrocity).

Such campaigns must have brutalised the soldiery for its campaigns against the indigenous peoples in subsequent decades. The American mythos demands that the Civil War be cast as a ‘good war’, like the war against fascism, and the ending of slavery is the oft-quoted justification.

But nothing is so simple – Sherman’s total war in Georgia destroyed an economy so that it could feed neither white nor black alike for a short while and the black population, after a period of liberation, were crushed, arguably in little better state, without federal help for another hundred years.

Southern resentment, although pragmatists might accept the inevitable, was turned against the blacks rather than the victors and it was forgotten that war exigencies had even begun to free the slaves so that they could defend a common homeland in the very last stages of the war.

Serious racism as opposed to labour exploitation grew after a victory that could not be followed through by the Northern liberals who seem, quite simply, to have lost interest.

More to the point, the smashing of the constraint on central government policy of the states’ rights ideology of the South, though it has remained a force in American politics to this day, finally turned a loose confederation into the potential to become a centralised war machine.

This development was delayed but the rise of a superpower was almost inevitable once America has absorbed the full economic potential of its vast internal market and its never-ending supply of cheap labour.

Reynolds rather skates over the next phase, from reconstruction to the First World War. Yet this is the phase that enables empire and which created the ideology of liberty that would be market-tested by Woodrow Wilson and then imposed by FDR.

At one end of the story, the tale is simply one of expanding to natural limits and of adding a couple of colonies in the European manner with the usual lies and brutalities involved in such enterprises.

At the other end, which is where Reynolds is weakest in analysis, there is the struggle to create a polity that can have values at all. The core values were set by the Constitution and the victory sealed at Appomattox.

However, there were many issues left hanging, of whom those of the blacks, women, indigenous tribes and ‘sexually different’ (the last weakly handled by Reynolds) were simply inconvenient and required resolution in the Sixties in a way that soon created a conservative reaction.

The central issue was how to bind the useful cheap migrant labour required by the capitalist machine into an earlier society of small farmers and tradesman, especially when the migrant labour might not hold to Protestant small town values.

This was not a new problem but an intensification of early nineteenth century problems.

Equally important and growing in salience with time was the clash (and sometimes co-operation) between the owners of capital, some now of immense wealth with significant power in and over Washington, with the aspirations of the wider population.

People in general wanted improved social conditions and, as consumers, unadulterated and low priced food and consumables. These struggles created the ideology of progressivism and the practice of American capitalism.

Progressivism sought to use executive authority, whether State or Federal, to make major changes in the structure of power to benefit the general population.

Unfortunately, it had the unfortunate effect of binding an appreciation of strong central Government to the capture by progressives of that strong central Government for the extension of progressive values overseas.

This is a continuous story of a development that has no formal ending date (indeed, it continues today) but the key transitional point is when America becomes a net exporter of capital and uses that leverage to control in stages the global conduct of its old rival, the British Empire.

Even as late as 1942 in the North African campaign, the British had the whip hand, but, by 1944, the export of US resources effectively broke any remaining pretensions to global leadership of the British Empire, a position already weak but from which it never recovered.

The story of the Atlantic Alliance is really little more than the de facto acquisition of the old British Empire by Washington without a fight and on the cheap.

The third phase starts not with Woodrow Wilson’s aspirations but with FDR, a remarkable politician, who faced a major economic meltdown, sustained the polity (without initially solving the underlying problems of economic weakness) and then discovered war as a means to economic growth.

Pearl Harbour was a tragedy but it was also a lucky break because it enabled an aspiration – the assertion of American Power globally on the back of the re-allocation of American resources into an expanded version of the same model that had won the American Civil War and had opened up the West.

This model was a strategic alliance between the private sector and the executive on terms of equality.

This is the essence of the objection to Sovietism – not only its tyranny (which was sincerely held as a concern across America) but also its threat as an economic model in which the State replaced what would later be called ‘public/private partnership’.

The US Government did not expropriate. It developed a system that might rightly be called ‘socialism for corporations’ that maintained a massive war effort in the 1940s and enabled the basis for the later information revolution. The model was not foolish. It opened up the West after the Civil War.

But it also did two things fraught with danger. It created the famous ‘military-industrial complex’, an interest in high government spending directed at perpetual warfare (even if frequently ‘cold’), and it encouraged politicians to sustain similar projects designed to build middle class support.

The expenditures were accordingly lopsided – from the GI Bill through to Eisenhower’s major investment in the road system (allowing rail in effect to collapse) and onwards, the US Federal Government extended the undoubted triumphs of the New Deal.

However, it also shifted them to benefit middle class voters and allies rather than the community as a whole. The road investment created the national dependence on Saudi Arabia. Cheap housing was not built but encouraged through unsustainable securitised debt.

Government bought off sections of the community successively by fiddling the legislative and budgetary books which encouraged identity politics, pork barrel-ism amongst legislators and policies whose consequences were never thought through.

This third phase is essentially the surprisingly short period in which the US was a major superpower, first in competition with communism and then alone.

The status was established by 1944 and probably reached its apogee (despite the problems of the 1970s) with the Coalition of the Willing that mounted the rescue of Kuwait in 1991, the last major assertion of UN values before Bush II introduced the concept of pre-emption.

This is a phase that continues. The seeds of being a superpower lay in the ability of a successful economy to become a net exporter of capital and act as arbiter to an increasing degree during the Great European Civil War of 1914-1945.

The seeds of a fourth phase were set when the US became a net importer of capital as its deficits grew. 9/11 is a neat marker but probably the failures of neo-con fantasists in Iraq will prove more significant in the long run.

FDR planted the seeds of crisis by building an unwieldy and often irrational system of social provision that locked in so many voters that even Reagan could not unravel it but this was married to the cost of fruitless wars (as in Vietnam).

It also became linked to a global system of bases that was simply a massive containment operation that eventually proved unable to deal decisively with global insurgency when it emerged in force a decade ago. In fact, welfarism is probably more of an economic problem than imperialism.

The ‘theory’ would have America dealing with its debt through constant economic growth – debt and the dependence on foreign investors would not matter so long as America remained a super power and its economy remained the most innovative (as evidenced by the information revolution).

The Chinese support America because they are now embedded in the system but America is no longer master of its own destiny in quite the same way. Instead of getting side-tracked into ‘opinion’, we should return to Reynolds and ask what his themes suggest about the future of the US.

No one can predict the future and America has the capacity to surprise – both FDR and Reagan were transformative to the fortunes of their country and there is no reason why a similar figure could not perform similar miracles but there are disturbing fundamentals to consider.

First, the crash of 2008 has still not worked its way through the system. Obama may be symbolically significant in historical terms but his Administration shows no sign of being in control of events.

He does not appear to have any strategy beyond accepting the need to bolster the private part of the private/public partnership system with massive thefts from the general population to sustain it. Perhaps there is no alternative now ...

Second, culture wars tend to be less important in times of economic hardship but if there is no leadership then culture wars can become proxies for economic demands.

The assumption that internal violence can be entirely crushed by what amounts to a growing ‘secret police’ capability within the country is to be doubted.

Reynolds rather passes over the extent of Western violence from Reconstruction to the 1890s but it was a strain of growth and violence could be a strain of decline.

As the US ceases to be able to direct global politics through the use of capital and arms, then it has to start sharing power, cutting deals and avoiding further entanglements until it has recovered at home.

The massive military presence worldwide has done little to stabilise key centres of insurgency just as we are about (March 2011) to go into what is expected to be another surge in global food prices

And at home, the oft-forgotten criminal insurgency in Northern Mexico is in serious danger of spilling into South-Western states already highly sensitised about immigration.

The demands of Christian fundamentalism do not only require ‘change’ in the broadly liberal cultural infrastructure of the US but also expect Congressional and Presidential support for its massive surge in missions overseas. Neither of these two pressures are well reported.

Despite the determined rhetoric of the neo-conservatives under Bush II, there is no scheming Hitler out there worthy of a ‘crusade’ that would kick-start the American economy and create national cohesion with total mobilisation.

America as nation-state was created (War of Independence), centralised as a corporate-executive power (American Civil War) and created as a superpower (the Second World War and the Cold War that followed) out of war.

Small wars are just not cutting the mustard. Teddy Roosevelt’s Spanish-American War might have helped create a culture ready to go overseas in 1917 but Vietnam smashed any taste for conscription.

Iraq has created a profound distrust between liberal America and the nationalist-patriotic and imperialist other half of it. To go to war in full patriotic mode today might even be a trigger for low key civil war, especially if the evidence is not clear and America has not been attacked.

So, this worthwhile history (the views above are mine, not Reynolds) provides a back-drop to these general thoughts.

It will help understand how America not merely moved from a colonial outpost to troubled empire but will help non-Europeans understand why Americans often believe in their moral destiny despite their own crimes, how they hold to their ideals and why they are very, very different from the rest of us.

[Vladimir Prudnikov · Rating 4 out of 5]

While a lively and informative narrative which often reads as a novel, this book did not strike me as "the best one-volume history of the United States ever written" promised by Joseph J. Ellis. Paradoxically, I enjoyed the nineteenth and the early twentieth century chapters (covering the periods outside Reynolds's own scholarly expertise) more than what would come next. Though not breaking new grounds, these sections provide a succinct overview of the major topics enlivened by judiciously selected anecdotes. The book, however, is chronologically unbalanced with progressively more attention being paid to each succeeding period. And when it comes to the 1970s through the 2000s, the narrative becomes increasingly skewed towards high politics, diplomacy, and technology with, for instance, culture left out almost completely and the style sometimes resembling that of a magazine article with excessive quotations and descriptions not adding much to the scholarly analysis. Furthermore, given the inevitable space limitations, it might be doubted, whether, for instance, the First Gulf War merits such a lengthy treatment. That being said, Reynolds's is not a bland summary but a personal - if sometimes idiosyncratic - take centered around the trinity of major themes (liberty, empire, and faith) and energized throughout by a strong authorial voice - and as such it is indeed a work to be recommended.

[Cormac Healy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really enjoyable romp through American history (American here means the land currently covered by the United States), from the earliest records of civilisations to the Obama era. I think if you are looking for an overview then you could do a lot worse.

Having read Howard Zinn's People's History I half expected this to be a complete opposite, giving attention solely to the Presidents and "Great Men" who made America, so I was pleasantly surprised to find lengthy sections given to women, African Americans, and the LGBT community, although frustratingly little on Latino culture, a trend which seems as pervasive in historiography as it is in popular culture. Another small gripe is that the book gives a reasonable (considering the limitations of a one-volume book) covering of Native American history, but focuses purely on the continental 48 states, ignoring pre-European histories of Alaska and Hawaii entirely (although the states themselves are pretty much ignored throughout).

I think you could do a lot worse than this as a starting point for American history; I certainly learnt a lot, and if nothing else it will provide a great springboard for future topics.

4.5/5

[Alicia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although dense at times this is a good overview of US history using the themes of liberty and empire as a guiding line. Reynolds uses many quotes from literature, and important figures, which make for an interesting read. He writes clearly and objectively, and seems to cover all the important events, and people, without slogging in too much detail (mostly). Each president gets some description, some more than others.
If you're looking to get your US history up to scratch, as I was, this will do the job. From here I feel I have a more all-round knowledge of that nations history, into which I can now take my pick of topics to delve in deeper. Useful for anyone who reads a lot of literary works from and set in the US, it has given me a better understanding of the historical demographics such novels work with.

[Peter Howrth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Third time reading through; still grips me just as it did the first time I read it.

[Benjamin Jeffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

After mostly reading about Eurasian history I finally decided to take the plunge into American history and after reading David Reynolds book on US history I have a new thirst for US history. A great comprehensive book on US history from the first indigenous peoples known in North America up until the banking crisis and election of Obama in 2008.

[Joel Whitney · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great read of the period from 1776 to 2008. Brings the story of the USA to life with countless anecdotes and primary sources. David Reynolds writes a thoroughly enjoying read and giving an increased interest in American history.

[Simon Wood · Rating 2 out of 5]

A BOOK OF TWO HALVES

Despite being billed as the best one-volume history of the United States in recent times, "America: Empire of Liberty" is a remarkably uneven book. Reynolds starts off well with a reminder of pre-1492 Native Americans achievements and a caustic look at the Columbus myth. The standard remains pretty high right on through his coverage of the colonial period, the war of liberation, the contradictions and correspondences between slavery and liberty, and on right up until the civil war. Up till that point it is a readable, succinct account of the United States history.

Then things start to level off, Reconstruction isn't dealt with particularly well in my opinion, but perhaps I was spoiled by recently reading Eric Foners masterpiece "Reconstruction". On to the Spanish-American War; Reynolds rightly acknowledges it was a war with the Spanish then the Cubans and Filipinos, though he seems to portray the conflict in the Philippines as one between equivalents ("atrocities mounted on both sides") despite acknowledging in the text that while 4,000 US troops died the death toll for Filipinos was around a quarter of a million.

On to the twentieth century: Reynolds exhibits satisfaction that the United States was never sullied by a large socialist party, but plays down the level of repression focused on the generality of leftists in America that peaked during the Red Scare after WW1 and reached a crescendo post WW2 with McCarthyism (so-called: in reality it went far deeper than Joseph McCarthy, see Ellen Schreckers "The Age of McCarthyism"). Neither of these periods is explored to any great depth.

The really great failure in the book is how Reynolds deals with issues of foreign policy during the twentieth century. There are no mentions of the bombing and invasions of Cambodia under Nixon, no mention of Lyndon Johnson's invasion of the Dominican Republic. Despite covering at relative length the Carter era treaty to return the Panama Canal to Panama there is zero coverage of the Bush I's invasion of Panama though ample, and not particularly erudite, coverage of the subsequent years invasion of Kuwait by Iraq and the American led response. On the US depredations in Central America during the Regan era - nothing more than a brief mention in the paragraph that inadequately covers the Iran-Contra affair. The coverage of the Vietnam War is fairly nugatory, other events such as the slaughter in Indonesia of 1965 or the invasion and occupation of East Timor, both of which the US were involved in to varying degrees, are not covered at all. Chile and Allende ("whose reforms had wrecked the [Chilean] economy" - US efforts in that direction obviously don't exist for Reynolds) receive one paragraph. The US's relationship with Israel is barely acknowledged. American support for Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan is entirely ignored. There is no attempt on Reynolds part to look into the systematic factors that drove the United States post-WW2 foreign policy with regard to third world countries that make up all of those mentioned above. For someone who is a professional international historian writing a book with the word "Empire" in the title this is beyond a joke.

The book begins as a succinct and reasonable synthesis of US history (pre-"discovery", colonial, independence, civil war) to one that is safe, comfortable and entirely within the cosy consensus of apologetic writing about the United States in the post WW2 world. Those chapters that deal with the twentieth century (with a few exceptions such as Reynolds account of the Civil Rights Movement) are often disingenuous, larded with chatty quotes and asinine details regarding the "great and the good", and totally distort the reality of US foreign policy. For that reason "America: Empire of Liberty" is a book that I heartily recommend avoiding.

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the scope of this book is hugely ambitious and it does an incredible job of condensing so much history into just under 600 pages. For example, I understand the development of Civil Rights in the 1970s (the progression from Griggs vs Duke Power to California vs Baake) much better now that I fully understand the response to foreign policy in that decade. Such a project would always miss out on certain events or have a few lapses but I felt that there were a few major elements (of varying degrees of specificity) which really let this book down.

I know it was 2009 and the language used to describe race has changed drastically in the last fifteen years but I do think describing Obama as 'the most exotic type' of African American was a bad choice even then.

My most pressing gripe with this book was the lack of discussion of Native Americans. I expected to be able to compare this book with Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee and with my schoolwork on Native Americans but there was approximately ten pages total on which they were mentioned. Beyond the cursory 'people walked over from Russia to Alaska thousands of years ago', the pre-1800s coverage was focused mainly on how Native Americans impacted Anglo-American relations. He also suggests that Plague Blankets were not widely used and that the passing of infections to Native Americans was primarily unintentional with very few exceptions. Given the letters from General Amherst describing the use of Plague Blankets as seemingly standard, I think Reynolds interpretation is naive - the matter cannot be proven either way but his instinct (contrary to leading evidence) to be lenient towards the American colonisers is indicative of his wider views.
Post-1800, there is an appalling lack of discussion of Native Americans. I just finished a 500 page book on just the second half of the 19th century which felt like it missed out a lot and yet Reynolds entire coverage of Native Americans from the Victorian period onwards is to spend one page briefly summarising the loss of Oklahoma, Little Bighorn and Wounded Knee and then later in the book he adds a paragraph saying that Native Americans also gained rights during the Civil Rights Movement and that there was renewed interest in their cause.
I was not only appalled by the lack of coverage but also the content of what was included. In regards to Little Bighorn, Reynolds laments that there are no reliable sources as the US Army was entirely killed. He completely ignores Native American accounts of the attack! Through both pictograms and interpreted accounts, we have a number of first hand accounts of the battle. Reynolds could simply lift the accounts relayed in Bury My Heart (which he name checks later in the book) but he insists on portraying the battles events as uncertain. In a paragraph with absolutely no citation he pretends to approximate what happened in the battle by using phrases like 'it seems' and 'probably'. He also fails to name key Native Americans in the Black Hills campaign (Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull, for example) or in fact, any Native American who lived after Pocahontas. The choice to relay Little Bighorn rather than Sand Creek or any other encounter (proceeding Wounded Knee) in which the US Army slaughtered non combatant Native Americans (including those camping under a white flag in the case of Sand Creek) fails to fully portray the horrific conduct of the US Army and makes the Plains Wars seem like a fair(ish) conflict. Despite being only a page long, this account is riddled with flaws.
Reynolds is clearly at least aware of Dee Brown's Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee because in his coverage of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement he briefly states that it increased sympathy for Native Americans. This exemplifies his determined focus not on Native Americans themselves but just their impact on white people. Whilst Bury My Heart was influential amongst the American population, so was Richard Oakes' occupation of Alcatraz in 1969. Unlike Dee Brown however, Oakes galvanised the Red Power movement inspiring fish-ins, occupations (of Mount Rushmore in 1971 and Wounded Knee in 1972) and generally the direction of Native American activism ever since. But Richard Oakes is Native American and Dee Brown is white so it is Brown who gets mentioned by Reynolds despite the limitations of his influence. I also noticed that Reynolds mentions Bob Dylan in regards to the March on Washington (1963) but neither A. Philip Randolph nor Bayard Rustin demonstrating that his bias towards mentioning white figures is not limited to the coverage of Native Americans.
Overall, the coverage of Native Americans reflects that of other minority groups beyond women and African Americans. I would expect something less surface level from a great history for the 21st century.
Any excuse for the failure to focus on Native Americans as their own people rather than just a medium through which to occasionally assess white Americans rings hollow. Although Native Americans only make up about 1% of American citizens, their persecution in the 19th century and the developing attitudes towards them in the 20th century are key to assessing the American nation. Reynolds claims his book is about 'liberty' and 'empire' but fails to address the suppression of liberty and the persual of empire on the North American continent.

In a very BBC manner, Reynolds tries to stay away from partisan politics. This is very effective in some cases as he is able to fairly assess presidents like Nixon and Johnson without bias. However, like the BBC's, this approach becomes very ineffectual on a large number of issues. Abortion is not something you can straddle the fence on and his attempts to present the conservative perspective come off very poorly. (( However, his decision to highlight the weakness of the ruling on Roe vs Wade was very fore sighted and lends credibility to the work))

I felt that on the whole Reynolds often presented specific examples without fully explaining the wider context. Whilst I did find his returns to the themes of religion and empire satisfactory, I felt that he failed to truly build any other throughlines and there were particular issues I felt were not given proper development.
Obviously in 2009 Reynolds had not watched Mrs America but I have and I think he severely failed to link Phyllis Schlafly to the rise of religious influence in politics and indeed to the rise of Ronald Reagan. He discussed both of these things in the same chapter as Schlafly so this felt like a particularly close miss.
I think Reynolds focus on specific events and his refusal to generalise made the narrative more credible and more compelling. However, when describing Swann vs Charlotte Mecklenburgh, I felt he focused too much on the specifics at the sacrifice of a proper description of the reasons for Affirmative Action and the hit it took later in the decade. This was a theme as although Reynolds devoted a lot of time to discussing African Americans, he talked mainly about enslavement, Jim Crow and then the Civil Rights Movement. His failure to fully explain Reconstruction or to talk about the treatment of African Americans post-1975 presents an image of linear progress and so his commitment to a chronological rather than thematic approach means that he misrepresents and oversimplifies the development of African American rights. Given I have studied Civil Rights and know very little about Foreign Policy or the economy I cannot say if he made similar simplifications in these areas. I do think any project of such a scale would have such problems but certain areas like Swann vs Charlotte Mecklenburgh and Phyllis Schlafly were particularly frustrating.

My final problem was with the over emphasis on Presidents in the coverage of the 20th century. By the final sections of the book it appeared less like a history of America and more like a summary of each President's time in office with brief intermissions to cover the social history aspects. This not only under emphasised the importance of the Supreme Court, for example, but also made the book more boring. Whilst the Civil War was covered from the perspectives of a number of different ordinary people, Vietnam was only covered from the perspectives of Johnson, Nixon and Kissinger. It just felt like the final third had been rushed for a deadline.

This book was helpful, very well researched and a good introduction to US history. However, some of these problems, particularly the lack of coverage of Native Americans really dehabilited the book.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book with massive scope, essentially the biography of a country. All told, it's an excellent one: engagingly written, fast paced enough to be readable but thorough enough to do the history justice. For me, having read many things on certain individual periods of American history (Founding Fathers, Gilded Age, Cold War etc.), it was really refreshing to have the whole history linearly laid out, and thereby gain a good sense of chronological perspective.

Of course, given the broad-stroke approach taken, the book was never going to be perfect. I got the impression that at certain points Reynolds privileged brevity where a more thorough examination of the events would have been preferred. This sometimes unfortunately resulted in an apparent lack of willingness to criticise the US.

For example, he mentions the (horrifying) massacre of all members of the population aged over 10 on the Filipino island of Samar during the Spanish-American War, and in the same breath goes on to describe improvements to the island's road and sanitation infrastructure as a result of the occupation (p. 298). At best this is unbalanced history; at worst this is apologism.

Likewise, Reynolds spends barely any time discussing the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, surely a key moment in 20th century US history, if not world history. This is a shame, as he avoided the interesting ethical arguments concerning this historical episode. If anybody cares, check out the popular historian Dan Carlin for a great discussion of this - I heard it in one of his excellent history podcasts.

Finally, I took issue with Reynolds' scanty coverage of Iran-Contra, taking up barely a paragraph. This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't followed by about ten particularly dull pages on personal computing and stock market reform in the 1980s.

Despite these flaws, the book is generally well written and Reynolds interweaves his themes beautifully. There are some truly excellent sections - standing out for me was the exhilarating coverage of the Civil War, and his analysis of socio-political dissatisfaction in the 1990s. Four thumbs up.

[Amarjeet Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Three volumes in one meticulous groundbreaking book which chart three facets of the American rise and parallel growth as an 'Empire of Liberty.' This book is not the sophisticated word clutter which histories usually tend to be. This is intended for the lay reader expressing an interest in the United States and its past. More prescient is the fact that Reynolds actually provides a comprehensive argument for why America became an Empire of Liberty rather than narrate tales now long rendered in the annals of history. A must read book for any historian studying the rise of the United States.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm addicted to this wonderful survey of American history from an outsider's point of view. I've been listening to the BBC radio version as presented by the author. I might pick up the book someday, but more likely I'll just listen to the 60-part radio series over and over again.

!!! I just discovered that there are going to be another 30 15-minute radio chapters, making the grand total 90. That's more than 22 wonderful hours! Hooray!

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ive read the chapters relating to what i will be teaching this September. Really good, clear narrative which connects the social, political and economic factors really well and made a very complex period of history easy to comprehend and exciting. The book is peppered with the stories of individuals, extracts of personal letters and accounts, and biographies of key figures.A must read for those,like me, who want or need to learn about the creation of modern America in a hurry!

[Wendy Yang · Rating 5 out of 5]

Illuminating read about American history, spanning from colonisation by the European empires up to Obama's election. The book is organised around the themes of empire, liberty, faith and the ironies in it. That is, an empire that resists expansion abroad (but is pulled into wars anyway, as prophylaxis against fears of a second Hitler/involved conflict...). Or a champion of liberty built on the bg of slavery, and increased freedom "to" instead of freedom "from" (that is a restrictive form of freedom). And despite enshrining secularism, migration there begun as a way to escape religious prosecution home in England, so spawning the puritans, Catholics, prohibition etc... , and faith in Liberty as a crusade in itself.

The conclusion is interesting. In 2009, Reynolds writes that the empire is in decline - following the patterns of prev empires which enter into substantial debt (economic) & lose the "faith" that holds the society together (social). Which is what I feel has certainly occured in the last decade. I wonder if the US might fissure into North + South + California

I really enjoyed the literary excerpts Reynolds includes, which illustrates some of the dominant perspectives of the time & later on... and how much they can contrast. e.g. how tragic the civil war/fight for freedom from slavery, yet the South's loss martyrs them leading to misleadingly idyllic portrayals in the aftermath. Even the war veterans forget!

[Budge Burgess · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent introduction to US history - very digestible, very readable, an excellent starting point for anyone wanting to get a grasp of the subject. The intensity ratchets up as we enter the second half of the 20th century and we get an intensive look at the politics and socio-economic situation unfolding post-WW2, taking us up to the election of Obama. No Trump - but the unfloding story prefigures much of what triggered the election of that man and poses some interesting parameters against which to evaluate the shaping of Trump's perverse politics.
So yes, an excellent introduction - will get you thinking, and carries enough information to enable you to chase other sources (excellent bibliography and copious notes) and ask questions about a country built on an ideology of being a just and godly power, champion of liberty, but embodying a legacy of genocide, slavery, injustice, inequality, greed and religious dogmatism.

[Liam Keogh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Given how difficult it must be to fit c.400 years of history into 600 pages, this is a real success. It is readable, insightful and educational without getting bogged down in the minutiae of any given period.

Sure the downside is that you can occasionally feel that pieces are missing, but should you feel left wanting more (from, say, the civil war, or wall street crash) you can dive in to something that deals specifically with that.

That I often felt disappointed to be moving on from a subject I think is just testament to how much I enjoyed it throughout. Would certainly recommend for anyone looking for a history of the united states in under 600 pages.

[Dan Cohen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good history of (essentially) the USA. Well written and very readable. I wasn't entirely convinced by the themes of empire, liberty and faith, which is not to say that they are not valid, just that making these the themes seemed a bit contrived at times - especially wrt. empire. Also seeming slightly contrived at times were the efforts to redress standard historical emphases on white males. But these are minor points - it's a good history and well worth reading.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a tour de force! A very good balance between breadth and depth. Reynolds quotes regularly from direct sources, giving greater insight into the events and people discussed. Excellent quote from the final page: the history of the United States is "shot through with paradox - the empire forged by anti-imperialists, the land of liberty that rested on slavery, the secular state energized by godly ambition."

[Michael Skaggs · Rating 4 out of 5]

It could use a bit more nuance, but this is an excellent general reader. The chapters make great sense and even those without a deep knowledge of American history will appreciate his balance of narrative and analysis.

[Rhys Davies · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up after seeing Hamilton and realising that I know nothing about American history. While it doesn't spend too much time on Alexander Hamilton (!), it does deftly span 500 years of American history and draws it together in a very satisfying way. A very good one-volume work.

[Russ Pavlik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very readable. Great one volume history. Best feature is it focuses on America's role in the world as it grows. Putting America's struggle with expanding liberty in the context of what was happening in the rest of the world at the same time is often neglected in history classes.

[Sean Beckett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, this is a tiny bit great.

Covering America from the beginning up to and including Obama’s election is no mean feat, but this is done very well indeed.

Some things aren’t covered in a tremendous level of detail, but it all just seems about right. Fascinating in fact.

[Bev Cheetham · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really well written book. You don’t feel as though you are reading non-fiction as it really is written so well. It also makes you think, hard about incidents which you thought you knew so well.

[Matthew Hurst · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent one volume guide to the history of America, a highly accessible but indepth guide to how the nation was born and it's history to the Obama days, Reynolds is an excellent historian and his passion comes through in his writing.

If you want to read an accessible history to the USA, this is one I highly recommend.

[Nick Spencer · Rating 4 out of 5]

very good

[Freddie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The perfect midway point between textbook-like detail and engaging story telling - 5/5.

[Felix · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good but not great history of the US. Very lucid and well-written, insightful and fast-paced. Mt main criticism is that it is unbalanced - far too much space is given to 20th century history, far too little to anything that came before. On top of that, Reynolds is too keen to note his personal opinions on matters that certainly don't require them. But certainly worth a read.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember distinctly that at about Jimmy Carter the book stops being a clear addressing of the facts of history and starts being the Authors own perspective on events.

This is not to the detriment of a fantastically written book.

[Jake John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible read - takes you right up to Obama presidency.
To fit 250 years into 500 pages isn’t easy but Reynolds has done a remarkable job.
It is a 4.5 but unable to give that so upgraded to a 5.