“Those who cannot remember the past,” said American philosopher George Santayana, “are condemned to repeat it.”
Generally in the twelfth grade.
Lots of people think of learning U.S. history as a punishment. It’s a subject you had to take in school. You memorized a bewildering array of dates, absorbed definitions for terms like Manifest Destiny, and wondered whether America really needed two presidents named Harrison. Historical figures were presented to you as if they were characters in a junior high school costume pageant. Their blemishes were airbrushed out, and their personalities were drained away.
Sure, you were taught George Washington warned the country about foreign entanglements in his “Farewell Address.” But wouldn’t it have been more interesting if you’d learned he never actually gave that speech? (It was printed in the newspapers. Washington didn’t care for speaking publicly because of his false teeth, which were made not of wood but of hippopotamus ivory.)
Alas, textbooks often overlook the fascinating moments and details of history. They present U.S. history as something dry and distant — all events and facts, trends and movements — and don’t focus on what it really is: the story of Americans. It’s the story of people: what they thought, did, and tried to do; what they ate, drank, and slept in and on; what made them angry and what made them laugh.
About This Book
This book is not a textbook, nor is it an exhaustive encyclopedia covering everything that happened in the United States in the past three or four centuries. Instead, it focuses on people: famous and infamous, well-known and obscure. It gives you a basic foundation of information about U.S. history. You can also use it as a handy reference. Haul it off the shelf to look up a fact, to settle an argument, or to store up ammunition for that next conversation with your know-it-all brother-in-law.
This book is also not completely objective. Although I’ve tried to stick to the facts — or at least the most widely accepted historical interpretations of the facts — the bottom line is that my own thoughts and biases and interpretations may sneak in from time to time. Sorry. Just ignore them.
Because U.S. history hasn’t always been bright and shining, especially when it comes to such topics as slavery and the treatment of Native Americans, this book doesn’t always deal with pleasant subjects. Some of what you read may anger you, sadden you, or even make you feel a little ashamed. But this book has a generally optimistic tone, and anyone who knows me will tell you it’s not because I’m a naturally cheery guy. Thirty-plus years as a journalist, most of which have been spent covering politics, have caused me to grow a pretty thick and skeptical shell. But the truth is that overall, America’s story is a positive one.
I’ve also included some things you may not find in most overviews of U.S. history. Although they may be of little importance in the long-term scheme of things, these facts are kind of fun to know about. Some examples: the Civil War general whose name helped to popularize a common term for prostitutes (Joseph Hooker); the Old West gunfighter who ended up a New York City sportswriter (Bat Masterson); and the kids’ toy that came about as a result of efforts to invent a rubber substitute during World War II (Silly Putty).
And if you’re a history purist, I think there’s a mention of Manifest Destiny in here somewhere.
Conventions Used in This Book
To help you find your way around in the book, I’ve used the following conventions:
● Italics are used both to emphasize a word to make a sentence clearer, and to highlight a new word that’s being defined.
● Bold highlights keywords in bulleted lists.
What You’re Not to Read
As you ramble around the book, you’ll encounter blocks of text in shaded gray boxes. They contain quotes; mini-profiles of both famous and semiobscure people; the origins of things; factoids and numbers; and other historical debris. You don’t need to read them to get what’s going on. They’re just there as little extras that I’ve thrown in at no additional charge. Feel free to read them as you find them, come back to them later, or save them for recitation at your next poker game.
Foolish Assumptions
I’m assuming you picked up this tome because you have some interest in U.S. history (which is why we chose the title). But it doesn’t matter if you know a little or a lot about the subject. I think you may enjoy it either way, even if it’s just to settle arguments about the Louisiana Purchase (Chapter 7) or whose signature was on the $2 bill in 1881 (Chapter 11). There are enough basic facts in here to have the book serve as a, well, basic U.S. history book, and enough trivia to irritate dinner guests who won’t go home.
How This Book Is Organized
Here’s some good news: You don’t have to consume this book in one big gulp, or even from start to finish. Each chapter is written so you can read it out of order if you want, without worrying about there being a bunch of stuff in it that you had to know from the chapters in front of it. (Told you it wasn’t a textbook.)
So, if you can’t wait to see how the Spanish-American War came out, go straight to Chapter 12. You can always go back and read about Manifest Destiny in Chapter 9 later.
If you stopped by the Table of Contents before wandering to the Introduction, you may have noticed this book is divided into six major parts. You can read the parts in any order you choose. The following sections describe what’s in each part.
Part I: Getting There, Getting Settled, and Getting Free
Someone had to be the first person to come to America, but your guess as to who that was is as good as mine. Nobody knows. Chapter 2 looks at one group of people who were in America pretty early, the Native Americans. It also examines the lives of the first non-Native Americans to explore the New World, from the Vikings to people like Henry Hudson.
Part I also considers the first efforts of the Europeans to create an actual settlement in America. Chapters 3 and 4 cover the development of the English colonies, the start of two scourges that still haunt the United States — slavery and the treatment of Native Americans — and the roots of the American Revolution. The last two chapters of this first part deal with the revolution itself and the difficult process of drawing up a blueprint for a new country.
Part II: Growing Pains
Remember how I said this book is about people? Well, Part II begins by focusing on one of the most important people in the early days of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. It ends by showing you one of the most influential people during the country’s adolescence, Abraham Lincoln.
In between these two great men, wars are fought against pirates, England, Native Americans, and Mexico. The United States then spends a lot of time and effort futilely trying to prevent a war between its own North and South. Gold is discovered, and California is invented. This part ends with the Civil War and the struggles that followed in trying to put the country back together.
You can find Manifest Destiny in this part, too.
Part III: Coming of Age
Here’s where America grows up. This part begins with the conquering of the West, the inventions of things like the light bulb and the telephone, and the country’s accelerating change from a nation of farms to a nation of cities.
It moves through the Spanish-American War, the development of a U.S. empire, and World War I. It talks about a whole lot of changes, ranging from growing racial and labor unrest to Prohibition and the development of the mass media. This part also looks at some of the most interesting Americans ever, from gangsters to sports heroes.
The country goes broke in Part III and sees much of its farmland blown away. You also get to know an aristocratic New Yorker named Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who has some pretty ambitious ideas about how to fix things.
This section ends with World War II, certainly the most epochal event of the twentieth century. It also examines the development of a particular weapon and its effects, which would be felt all over the world for half a century.
Part IV: America in Adulthood
Part IV begins by examining the Cold War with communism and the hot war in Korea. It then takes you through the fascinating ’50s and explores the most dominant medium of our age, the boob tube. Television allowed most of America to watch the birth of John F. Kennedy’s “New Frontier,” witness a terrifying game of diplomacy over missiles in Cuba, and see Kennedy killed by an assassin’s (or assassins’?) bullets.
This part traces the events leading up to and including the war in Vietnam, and it also explores the culture-shaking effects of this war. It talks about hippies, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford (remember him?), and a former Hollywood actor who became president.
The section ends with a look at the 1990s, especially the end of the Cold War, the development of the microchip and the computer, and the first eight years of the twenty-first century, in which Americans elected two presidents, fought two wars, suffered the largest terrorist attack in modern history and endured the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Part V: The Part of Tens
You may want to trot out Part V when the party is getting a little slow or when you just want to irritate that uncle who has a loud opinion on everything. This section starts with ten inventions that changed the way Americans live. Obviously, there are a lot more inventions that are a lot more important. This list just gets you thinking about them.
Then Part V moves to a list of ten events that affected American culture or the way Americans act and think of themselves. Again, the list isn’t meant to be exhaustive, or exhausting for that matter. Just food for thought, or the roots of some good topics to argue about over Thanksgiving dinner. Finally, you find ten events or figures in U.S. history that film producers keep making movies about, even when no one asks them to do so.
Part VI: Appendixes
Well, I told you this could be used as a reference book. In the Appendixes, I’ve included two of the most important documents in American history: the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence. Yeah, I know. It seems a bit silly to leave the best writing in the book until the end.
Where to Go from Here
Congratulations! By reading this far, you’ve already learned something about U.S. history: It doesn’t bite, induce deep comas, or poke you in the eye with a sharp stick. Read a few more pages, and you may get the itch to keep going even further.
As I said before, history is the story of people.
And people are the most interesting story of all.