Kısa Amerika Birleşik Devletleri Tarihi

Cambridge Concise Histories

by Susan-Mary Grant, Ayşe Doğancı (Translator)

YENİ DÜNYA’DAN SÜPER GÜCE

Böylesine zarif bir şekilde yazılmış, son derece okunabilir ve Amerikan tarihinin güncel bir özetinde Susan-Mary Grant, Amerika Birleşik Devletleri’nin ulus olma duygusunu yaratan süreçlere keskin bir bakış açısı getiriyor.

Profesör Richard Carwardine, Oxford Corpus Christi College Başkanı

Atlas Okyanusu’nun ötesinde, yeni bir dünya keşfetmek umuduyla yola çıkan kâşiflerin ve hayalperestlerin yurdu Amerika…

Kristof Kolomb’un Amerika kıtasına ayak basmasından George Washington’un bağımsızlık mücadelesine, Thomas Jefferson’ın özgürlükçü ideallerinden Abraham Lincoln’ün köleliği sona erdirmesine kadar birçok hikâye barındırıyor.

Amerika’nın bağımsızlık mücadelesi nasıl başladı? Kölelik nasıl sona erdi? Sanayi devrimi Amerika’yı nasıl etkiledi? İç Savaş’ta neler yaşandı? Amerika, dünya savaşlarına nasıl katıldı? 11 Eylül neyi değiştirdi? 2008 ekonomik krizi nasıl atlatıldı?

Susan-Mary Grant’in titizlikle kaleme aldığı bu eser, Amerika Birleşik Devletleri’nin tarihini başlangıcından günümüze kadar detaylı ve sürükleyici bir biçimde anlatıyor. İlk yerleşimcilerin Yeni Dünya’da kök salma mücadelesinden, Amerikan Devrimi’nin alevlenmesine kadar geçen süreçte, Amerika’nın bağımsızlık ve özgürlük için verdiği savaşın izlerini sürüyor. Amerika’nın karmaşık sosyal yapısını, kölelik ve yerlilerin hakları gibi zorlu konuları ele alarak, özgürlük ve eşitlik ideallerinin peşinde nasıl şekillendiğini gözler önüne seriyor. Amerikan İç Savaşı, sanayi devrimi ve dünya savaşlarının getirdiği zorlukların, ulusal kimliği nasıl yeniden tanımlandığını gösteriyor.

Grant, sömürge dönemlerinden modern zamanlara kadar uzanan bu yolculukta, Amerika’nın hem iç hem de dış politikadaki mağlubiyetlerini ve başarılarını ortaya koyuyor. Amerika Birleşik Devletleri’nin tarihi, sadece bir ulusun değil, aynı zamanda tüm dünyanın hikâyesidir.

Cambridge University Press tarafından yayımlanan ve Kronik Kitap Kısa Tarih Dizisi’nin yeni üyesi olan Kısa Amerika Birleşik Devletleri Tarihi, Amerika’nın tarihine ve kültürüne ilgi duyan herkes için vazgeçilmez bir kaynak olacak.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Audiobook, American History

672 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 2011

About the author

Susan-Mary Grant, Ph.D. (University of London), is Professor of American History in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at University of Newcastle, England. She co-founded and is the current Chair of the association of British American Nineteenth Century Historians (BrANCH), is an officer of the Scottish Association for the Study of America, and serves on the editorial board of Nations and Nationalism.

Reviews

[Benjamin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good overview of American history with a frequent emphasis on discrimination and racism. There's a poverty of information on wars and military interventions.

[Jon Black · Rating 3 out of 5]

An ok book for getting a broad overview of American history. It focuses largely on the domestic history of the United States and doesn't talk a lot about foreign policy, except in the case of the Vietnam War and maybe WW2. The book has some interesting things to say about the position of the natives, black people, and women throughout the US's history, especially in the earlier part of the history.

However, the book approaches the modern day though it tends to hew closer to the official line you'd expect from the US government. The coverage of the Cold War is not great, and there's some outright inaccuracies at points. For example Grant refers to the "Viet Cong" as being a North Vietnamese force when anyone familiar with the Vietnam War knows they were made up of Southern Vietnamese. This is part of Grant's attempt to portray the war as strictly a conflict between North and South Vietnam which is of course ahistoric. Another example: Grant asserts that the Gulf of Tonkin incident "may have" involved the Vietnamese attacking the USS Maddox, but this is too generous to the US government given even their internal reports, since declassified, acknowledge there was no attack.

Overall a mediocre book, but I don't regret reading it because I did learn a thing or two.

[Kamran syed · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's more of a political history or political struggle between different sections of the American society than the all encompassing history. It's difficult to describe it but the logical historical events are missing. The chronology is not inclusive of all that happened in the United States of America from its birth till today. Great wars, inventions amd interventions are completely missing. The aspect of black Afro-American & the political struggles are vividly described which makes the title of the book a little blurry.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

How very different from the textbooks I (somewhat vaguely) remember! Its focus on social history rather than political left me with the impression of being wishy-washy, not necessarily due to any faults in the book but rather my experience of what a history textbook is — I did want more a sense of concreteness. Perhaps there is in the printed version (ie, footnotes) rather than the audio (I think a general limitation of audio history).

[arafat · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very well-written survey history, as enjoyable to read as it is insightful!

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gives a good summary of domestic American history. Given it’s length and scope it’s not expected to go much deeper than that. I enjoyed the parallels brought up throughout the book such as the frequent question of what an american is, how inclusion can promote exclusion, and how moral panics have always happened and continue to happen in society.

[Zeynep Koç · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is very rich in detail. I love the author's perspective, it's enlightening!

[Griff Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reads a bit like a really long essay. Not a particularly useful way to fill in gaps in knowledge like I was hoping for.

[Nora · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really want to give this book a higher rating. The great writing style and effort Grant obviously took in creating such an interesting read is commendable. By about the time Lincoln had arrived on the scene, however, the book had devolved into a never ending stream of social strife that had squeezed out other topics of interest entirely. I think there was one sentence written on the War of 1812 and it was placed as an after thought. Believe, we know how bad our history looks. We had and have a lot of racial discord in this country very much worth discussing and working out but I felt like Grant missed major topics because she ran out of space, leaving enough room for America's social and racial problems. Or perhaps this book should have been titled differently so as not to have misdirected the reader into thinking this was a concise history of the United States rather than what it is - a detailed and accurate, although noticeably opinionated, story of our struggles with cultures and working together as we created ourselves.

[Reprievedsoul · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unstructured stream-of-consciousness (at best). Dictated lecture-notes, probably.
Dr.Grant needs to acknowledge that this knowledgable reference book will not correct te 'wrongs of history' unless it appleas itself to the fundamentals of logic nd reason. Start where We are (not where we wish). State your hypotheses and evidence. Draw Conclusions from the Evidence.

I'm not finding this book rewarding enough to be worth the effort. Too many internal contradictions, too hard going. Yet it's a good approach, especially in the context to current/recent White House events, which it does seem to presage. But "Concise" it's not. Maybe short, by history-book standards, but there's a difference. Concise needs to be a work which gets points across efficiently, with structure and emphasis.
This one meds to be edited down to concision.