Good/useful book if you need a crash course in American history. It starts with the European discovery of the Americas, and goes through to the 2000 presidential… hum… elections… (He even touches on the September 11 attacks, but just barely.) The different eras are divided by chapter, so if you are looking to just get a refresher about the Civil War for example, you can easily jump to that section. The author uses a Q&A technique, which I didn’t necessarily enjoy; I felt he jumped from one topic to the next, with no flow. But I suppose that when you are trying to get through six centuries, you don’t have time for prose. Not the easiest read, at least not from front to back, but then again, the suspense is lacking as we all know how the story turns out (notice I didn’t say ‘how the story _ends_’). Although it did not bore me to death either (which says a lot for a history book)! I definitely learned a lot. I didn’t study much American history in high school or college, so this book helped fill a lot of gaps. There are certain time periods or events or people I wished the author wrote more about, but he did have a list of ‘MUST READS’, which I look forward to looking into for more detail. Overall, I enjoyed this book.

The last paragraph says it all (and basically summarizes the 600 pages that lead up to it):

‘America has survived a lot. Revolution. A civil war. Two world wars. Depressions and recessions. Presidents and politicians, bad and good. A cold war that took the world to the brink of mass destruction on more than one occasion. And then a terrorist attack that shook the very foundations of the country’s security and sense of trust. As the country begins the take its first uncertain steps into the new century, remembering America’s history becomes all the more important. What’s past, after all, _is_ prologue.’