Dumbing Down our History? Or more Insidious Goings-on?
931706
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

How in the hell do you turn the founding fathers' well-crafted declaration of a people free to protect themselves from ANY tyrannical government to this ideological claptrap:

"The people have the right to keep and bear arms in a state militia".

WRONG, Mr. History Professor.  And if this is our Government's view of AP History, WRONG AGAIN.  Guess I'd better get ready to homeschool...
463792
It's not possible to seriously study the American Revolution without having a knowledge of the French Revolution, as well.  Both having been in the name of "the people", why did one work so well,  giving us the world's oldest operating constitution, while the other descended into a chaotic, paranoid killing spree?
The short answer is that the French committed the classical blunder of "people's movements" : stirring unbridled emotion in with the idea that the people reign supreme, this is the people's government, so question it and you're against the people.....now prepare to have your height reduced by a foot or so.  As an example, the Declaration of the Rights of Man states such laughably contradictory statements of "rights" that it's hard to imagine anyone ever thought it could work in the first place:  from Article 4 "Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else;"  I guess it would be insulting you to draw the line from freedom  to tyranny when you're using statements that fatuous as your guiding light.  It's kind of like describing your political ideology as "being for good things and against bad things".  That's a bit open-ended, don't you think?
History shows hoards of people running like lemmings into the arms of movements that do this again and again at the urging of intellectuals who, in the attempt to reconcile theory with practical solutions, fail miserably and leave an atrocious body-count in their wake.  By now, you'd think this dismal little scenario, playing itself like an endless loop of a bad horror film, would recede into history but that just doesn't seem to be the case.  After being beaten down by some megalomaniacal ruler, the "people" tend to make the classical over-step of tearing everything to ground level in an effort to scrub themselves clean of the past.  What's usually left is a barren wasteland that's as bad or worse than the original offense.
To put it very briefly, the American Revolution differed in that it didn't discard every last remnant of Britain, keeping the best while discarding the worst.
This is an excellent effort, although I think it steps beyond its limits in the final chapters as the author understandably attempts to integrate the lessons from both revolutions to the present.  This seems to brief to be of much value and probably should have been the subject of another book.
1248772
Noticed a little slanting to the left on revising history in this series.
18929
The History Channel ought to be ashamed. Everything , including the dating of the site, composition of stone, weights of bigger stones Are wrong!!!!!!The truth is just as interesting as this silly show. The site has numerous stones in various stages of completion demonstrating the real method of construction.  Someone needs to remind you the name of the channel is HiHISTORY,not Scify.
1290974
My opinion is The publisher edited out all pertinent backup resources.  This is not an inaccuracy by the author it is a preference by the publisher to edit out facts  & recorded history which provides substantial historical information. The fact is that the publisher has yielded to "current opinion" and failed to do it's own fact checks. Publisher edited/reduced the book by approx 25%, naturally cutting the actual footnotes & references etc.  This publisher has decided to accept the "established View" of history rather than investigate actual history.  This is My opinion!
1749656
Nice reading but quite a frivolous handling of historical facts. As an example, suggestion that Jaruzelski was thinking about the martial law after the elections in June 1989 is a total aberration!
2921858
Hi Mel!
The controversial points of  your movie are far from being exhaustive. Faith, religion, the Jewish question,... but there's still more to discover that's not mentioned in the interview. It is worth watching (I mean both - movie and interview), BUT... Did you know that you're out of date with your Passion?! What makes you think Jesus lived then and there? There's a terribly convincing tradition of historical thought that was first formulated by Isaac Newton (!) and has gained momentum since then that claims the history of humanity to be much, much shorter than we usually presume. We even don't bother to question ourselves whether what we learn in school is TRUE at all... I think that much of what we take for granted should be revised. Apart from Newton, you should read Fomenko's works about chronology falsification like "History: Fiction or Science" (I gave it five stars, too).
3227111
Junk Liberal Jargan so thinly veiled it is a shame.  History can be misused to make any point one's looking for. That is Alice's pit I am not going there! Lets be better than that and try to uplift the masses and point out the best we can and have been. Can you find a better nation to be a part of, with freedom to develop yourself and achieve????
And by the way Slavery and Raceism is really the traping of people in the state they find themselves in.  NOT the Freedom to be socially mobile and move out by using the advantages offered in this country - by using hard work, and education, and dreams to improve one's state in life.
Writing books for a political spin and fronting them as HISTORY is a crime.  That is an OPINION BOOK....NOT HISTORY! Let's stop the political crap.  Too much at stake.
656491
Amazon / Audible are a bit disingenuous and annoying because they conveniently avoid any reference to the original publication date of some of their history audiobooks.  This is a "classic history" published in 1940.  It took a few goggles to find the hard copy publishing date.  The writing of history has changed great deal over the years.  Classic histories typically focus on "high politics, military considerations, and sometimes dubious social theories.  Social history, women's history, economic history, and demography are usually absent.  Most of all, prose writing styles have changed a great deal.

There are good reasons to read "classic histories" and certainly professional historians do so, but assuredly is it is not the first thing anyone should want to read to learn about Europe since the defeat of Napoleon.  Also absent from the descriptive information are the reviews of the book.  The cover photo of Bismarck hints at why all this might be problematic to anyone but classic history fans.  How was Bismarck viewed by Anglo-American historians in 1940?  I suspect it's changed a bit in 75 years.

I suspect that this is all about taking books that are out of copyright and making a profit sans royalties to the writer(s).  I'm not even sure Mitchell Garrett was a distinguished historian of his day even if I suspect he was.  You could spend your credits on an audiobook written by a acclaimed contemporary historian like Rich J. Evans who asks in an early chapter of "The Coming of the Third Reich" if it is wrong to start his account with Bismarck?  He never definitively answered that question, but that is indeed where he starts.  Or you might try Ian Kershaw the incomparable Hitler biographer.  I seriously wish Amazon / Audible would release an audio version of a contemporary work focused on the 1800s such as David Blackbourn's History of Germany, 1780-1918: The Long Nineteenth Century,

What upsets me most is the apparent attempt at deception in the marketing of these old books.  Curiosity about history is scarce enough without having interest damp down by shady marketing practices.
3155216
I was excited to purchase this book and was eager to get a strong historical overview of history of labor in the United States. The book is quite handsome looking, and the writing style is clear and engaging. However, I was no further than page 2 before I started getting nervous about the academic integrity of the work. The first statement that raised warning flags for me was "the Arawak population had dwindled from about ten million to a few thousand at best (p. 2)" I am not a scholar myself, but I thought that starting population number seemed unusually high. I spend part of a day researching it and could find no reputable historian willing to cite a number even close to that.

Here is a comment on the matter from Bob Corbett, Professor Emeritus at Webster University:  "There is a great debate as to just how many Arawak/Taino inhabited Hispaniola when Columbus landed in 1492. Some of the early Spanish
historian/observers claimed there were as many as 3,000,000 to 4,000,000. These numbers seem to be based on very little reliable evidence and are thought to be gross exaggerations. However, since nothing like a census was done, the methods for estimating the numbers are extremely shaky, whether by these early historians or later critics. One long technical article on the population comes in the with the low estimate of 100,000. Several other modern scholars seem to lean more forcefully in the area of 300,000 to 400,000. Whatever the number, what happened to them is extremely tragic."

So there is not much scholarly agreement...but ten million? Where is the support for that claim? As a reader of this book, you will never get to know; oddly, there are no footnotes, endnotes, or references to back up any claims being made. I find this to be a troubling oversight in a book of this nature. Nevertheless, one exaggerated figure is not a huge crime. Unfortunately, before I can even make it to the next page, more questionable claims are being made. The authors begin casually suggesting that Romans and Africans had beat Columbus to his New World discovery. Research into those claims will also show you that the current evidence being offered is exceptionally weak. I am unaware of a single peer-reviewed scholarly article that supports a claim of this nature. These authors not only suggest that it occurred...but that it occurred often enough to result in commerce between these cultures. Who would read further at this point? What confidence can be had in the content based on this beginning? I came to this book with enthusiasm and genuine interest. I had no desire to pick it apart. However, as a college educated person, I could not help but be frustrated and disappointed with the fast and loose approach to history that this book appears to offer.  Caveat emptor.
4797703
Awesome book!  I am tired of the powers to be Lying to us about our TRUE past!
2654032
I like that the statements are backed up by sources though not as much as I would like.  I would like to see all of this information updated with source material and access information.  These things seem so extreme that they can't be believed!  how can we possibly accept such stuff as factual.  It must be a mistake!
4630294
We have had many great historians and history books so it is not worth one's time to read minor history books like this one. Lind has written some decent things but this is not one of them.

Midwest Independent Research, educational websites. US history, mwir-ushistory.blogspot. There is a book list here.
952750
This seems to be the official "La Raza" account of American history.....
More typical crap about the "white Devil" suppressing the poor "native americans" (Indians)and "afican americans"....
 See the "Kirkus review" of this revisionist crap history...That sez it all....

There is TONS of evidence the White man was in North America in ancient times....
Skip this anti-White revisionist crap and pick up a copy of "Ancient American Magazine" for true ancient North American research without the agenda of hating White people...(The White people who built and sustain this country in the presence of humanoid parasites who hate us....).....
67422
While I appreciate the attempt to teach true history to kids- why did he have to use telepathic references and speaking to a horse through the mind- that's demonic and could have made the historical references with out all that nonsense. I don't want my children exposed to that kind of new age thinking. We will be learning true American history through other sources.
4133590
What a great subject - sure it is polarizing, which is why the early uninformed effort to discredit this book with 1 star ratings.  Can you say digital book burning??

looking forward to reading it.  We either learn from history or we are doomed to repeat it.
618741
I did not buy or read this book but I have lived. Most Americans do NOT know their own history preferring to believe it begins contemporaneously in North America - perhaps a generation or two ago in "The Old Country" - and that's the sum of it. NO it is not. I would humbly suggest learning European history - the past one-two thousand years should do. After that learn American history - North American history - the past 400-500 years will suffice. Do NOT stop at the deliberate and determined brainwashing of U.S. school systems - or the benign descriptions constructed long ago that cloak the stench and the horror of "conquest". The savagery of covetous greed and obsessive envy are the crimes against humanity TRUTH. Only then will you truly know "evil" does exist - and the Catholic Church is the very LAST organization on earth Jehovah will extend His power to "heal".

If you dare.