American Destiny: Narrative of a Nation, Volume 2

by Mark C. Carnes, John A. Garraty

Bridging the present to the past. "American Destiny"'s mission is to show readers how history connects to the experiences and expectations that mark their lives. The authors pursue that mission through a variety of distinctive features, including American Lives essays and Re-Viewing the Past movie essays. This book is the abridged version of "The American Nation," 14th edition.
Note: MyHistoryLab does not come automatically packaged with this text. To purchase MyHistoryLab, please visit www.MyHistoryLab.com or use ISBN: 9780205216550.

552 pages, Paperback

First published December 10, 2002

About the author

Mark C. Carnes is Professor of History at Barnard College.

Reviews

[Robin]

This textbook was okay. I wasn't too crazy about the first volume, either. But they at least compliment each other well. The thing that gets confusing with this book is that it isn't quite written chronologically, and it isn't quite written by theme, either. It seems to be an odd combination of the two.
However, I will say that I did't get bored reading it. I'm not a history buff. At all. But the text kept my attention and if I had to get through 30-40 pages in a day, it wasn't agonizing for me.
My sister-in-law taught out of this book for one semester and hated it, but my history teacher has used it several times and loves it. So it seems that from a teaching standpoint, you'd either really like it or really hate it.
I occasionally found some factual errors. And if I'm finding them, it makes me wonder how many are there that I wouldn't know about. I was also a little disappointed that the closer the book came to the present, the more vague and rushed the information seemed.