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The History of the United States, 2nd Edition  By  cover art

The History of the United States, 2nd Edition

By: The Great Courses, Allen C. Guelzo, Gary W. Gallagher, Patrick N. Allitt
Narrated by: Allen C. Guelzo, Gary W. Gallagher, Patrick N. Allitt
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Publisher's summary

This comprehensive series of 84 lectures features three award-winning historians sharing their insights into this nation's past - from the European settlement and the Revolutionary War through the Civil War, 19th-century industrialization, two world wars, and the present day.

While American history spans not much more than two centuries, it is filled with a wealth of leaders, wars, movements, inventions, and ideas - each of which contributed in its own unique way to America's transformation from 13 disparate colonies on the east coast of North America into a global superpower.

These lectures give you the opportunity to grasp the different aspects of our past that combine to make us distinctly American, and to gain the knowledge so essential to recognizing not only what makes this country such a noteworthy part of world history, but the varying degrees to which it has lived up to its ideals.

The lectures chart the five predominant themes that run throughout the chronicle of U.S. history:

  • The American passion for freedom-including religious, political, and economic freedom.
  • The pursuit of education, which has been the quintessential way for Americans to invent (and reinvent) themselves.
  • The unquestioned faith in the value of popular government.
  • The willingness of Americans to experiment with and adapt to new environments and situations.
  • The belief that the United States is a "city on the hill," a country the likes of which the world has never seen before.

Placing familiar historical events in the context of these overarching themes will help you see American history less as a series of separate events and more as a mosaic in which everything is interconnected.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2003 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2003 The Great Courses

What listeners say about The History of the United States, 2nd Edition

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Had its Ups and Downs

What did you like best about The History of the United States, 2nd Edition? What did you like least?

It is hard to review this course in whole since the three professors’ styles are so different but while I was hoping for more (the treatment of some events felt lacking) the course certainly covers other areas very well.

Lecture Breakdown:
Professor Guelzo (Lectures 1-36) - Colonization to mid 19th century
Professor Gallagher (Lectures 37-48) - American Civil War era
Professor Allitt (Lectures 49-84) - Late 19th century into the 21st century

Professor Guelzo
Ups:
- It felt like almost no detail of American history was left out in his comprehensive and expansive survey; Surprisingly it did not start with England’s colonial expeditions but the expeditions of Europe, in general, of North and South America

- The Professor was passionate about the content, had a fondness for the characters, and could tell a good story/successfully leave you at a dramatic cliffhanger

- Lecture 9 on the French and Indian War

Downs:
- While Professor Guelzo is a great story-teller and cliff-hanger master, at times his penchant for dramatizing just about everything and using longer than usual sentences made it difficult at times to follow certain points without rewinding; There were times I’d rather the professor had stated straight facts about an event or results of an event vs overdramatizing since it seemed like certain facts were either missing or got lost in the “story”


Professor Gallagher
Ups:
- He is one of my favorite lecturers in the Great Courses stable (along with Professor Vandiver) and delivered an excellent detailed narrative of the origins of the Civil War, the military history of the war, and study into non-military events such as the emancipation, life on the home front, the diplomatic front, etc.

- Lecture 46 on Reconstruction after Civil War

- He provided a great detailed narrative that is pretty straight forward making it easy to understand

Downs:
- The professor had a habit of modulating his voice between speaking really low to really loud; He’d start a sentence too loud and end it too low; This made it very difficult at times to select a volume that would prevent me from having difficulty hearing him without being annoyed by the loud bursts


Professor Allitt
Ups:
- Professor Allitt did a good job of articulating the evolution and transformation of society from an isolationist, primarily agricultural country to the highly industrialized world power the US had become

- Lectures 62-63 on World War I

- Lecture 84 Reflections and main themes (this course had one of the best concluding lectures I've listened to)

Downs:
- For the most part I couldn’t get into his lectures: I was hoping he’d provide more background or facts around certain historical events (vs. in some cases treating events in passing like the Spanish-American War)

- He concluded his lectures in a somewhat abrupt manner: there wasn’t much summation of the key points of the lecture or a preview of what the next lecture had in store so there were times when the professor would make a point and suddenly there’d be applause to mark the end of the lecture without any warning that it was winding down!

Overall: I found "Turning Points in American History" a much better course on U.S. history but I also can't say this was a bad course. Was it worth my time? I'm still sort of undecided. There certainly was good but when it is dispersed among 42 hours and there is also alot of other time when I felt myself zoning out, I'm not too sure of my final feelings on this course.

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Hard to be fair with three different providers.

My biggest (but most alarming) complaint about this presentation is the lack of hard data and history notes to back up why I felt boarded on personal option.
While I understand history “changes”; there was no empirical evidence to support many claims. For example, I’ve long learned that The Puritans settled in America to escape religious persecution from back home. Here, the arguement Is presented that they had come to America for financial independence.

Other claims that fly in the face of what I was taught (many years ago) could be correct, but without reference to cases, finds or diaries, it is simply the lecture’s belief. A few examples are;
Slaves were more predominant in the South due to public views, not farming or cotton production.
The push westward was due to strife and discord against he Native Americans, not just simple expansion.
Our founding fathers were driven to act more out of fear than hope.
- I’m not saying this is incorrect data, just without documents or references to back up it up, it’s hard to take in.

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279 people found this helpful

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Wow!

This is my third Great Courses lecture series, and it was as amazing as the other two. I especially enjoyed Professor Guelzo's enthusiasm, which was contagious, but I give high marks to all three. They did a great job of breaking the series at logical points, which makes it possible to break off listening for a bit while you go read or listen to something less weighty, then come back and pick it up, no problem. I really feel, after listening to this series, that I have a more well-rounded grasp on American history, more than just the cold dates and facts. The various eras and the individuals who left their marks really came alive for me. I'm so glad that Audible and The Great Courses have teamed up! And now off to find another new favorite.

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65 people found this helpful

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Everything You Need to Know about US History

I have always heard of the formation of the United States, slavery, the Constitution, the Civil War, the reformation, the Industrial Revolution and the two World Wars from the perspective of the United States. This book takes all of those, plus everything in between, and sets it up in an easy to understand framework. If you are a history buff, this is a piece of history you cannot afford to overlook, no matter how much you think you know (or care) about it.

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54 people found this helpful

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Narrator of Part 3 Take with a Grain of Salt

Professors of parts 1 & 2 are amazing; professor 3 is a bit sexist and apologist for racism. For 2 examples, he tries to make it sound like segregation laws worked both ways, and he laughs that women in the 1960s were the only group that needed "consciousness ridings" to learn they were oppressed. No, they knew Prof. They just never had a place to talk about it.

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Bad right from the beginning

Being from Europe and listening to the first two chapters, one does not want to continue. When the professor Guelzo says that Isabella I and Ferdinand V had just one child, Joanna of Castile, and that she had just one child Charles V, how can anybody believe that the rest of the history explained in this book is correct? And why does the professor say that the Holy Roman Empire was a preposterous happenstance? Why is he so biased and uneducated about European history?
And it continues with the American history: "... the Church laboured to Christianise the Indians which meant in the process destroying traditional books". How can somebody who says that the Indians had books be the Senior Research Scholar in the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University! Maybe he is a leading authority on the Civil War but there are too many mistakes in this audiobook showing that he is not a good historian since he does not know the basics.

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A Wonderful Course on American History

Any additional comments?

Based on past experiences with the Teaching Company / Great Courses, I have come to expect quite a bit from their courses. With expectations high, I say this course through American history is a winner.

Let's face it: A course of 84 half-hour lectures is long and arduous. Even so, it is not much space and time in which to tell the wildly diverse story of the United States. This course, like most history courses of this scope, is an overview. Overviews, by nature, tend to be cursory and selective. Moreover, while I certainly would not call myself well-read in American history, I have read and taught through various courses/texts on United States history. Thus, even with the overview-type nature of the course and my familiarity with the material, there were *plenty* of insightful, detailed, and connective moments of teaching that were enlightening to me.

The lectures (both in content and selection of materials) betray a moralism that leans toward contemporary Western, liberal, enlightenment-rooted values. This is most evident in the selection and ordering of materials in the later lectures. As an example, here are some lecture titles: "76 - The Vietnam War; 77 - The Women's Movement; 78 - Nixon and Watergate; 79 - Environmentalism." Ordering American history in this way reflects the fragmentation of the history department into myopic partisan attempts at generating their own meta-narratives. This fragmentation seems quite prevalent in the institutions of higher education, certainly at my University. Even so, the professors (all of them) avoid being narrow and partisan (which is one of my expectations of Great Courses). The lectures specifically mentioned above were themselves quite helpful in developing my personal understanding of those particular issues not only by summarizing all the recent partisan historical scholarship (a very helpful thing of itself), but also by connecting the many particular groups and viewpoints with the broader American story. That is, these professors are gifted storytellers. They did a good job of telling all of these partisan stories within the bigger story of American history.

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A journey worth taking

Probably one of the best credits I've spent on Audible. 42 hours - 84 lectures covering a pretty thorough survey of the history of the U.S.

Much of it I remembered from school, much I had forgotten, and still more I had never heard before. It was particularly interesting towards the end, hearing historical lectures about the recent decades that I have lived through.

Overall, I found it to be a pretty even handed telling. This is our story - the good and the bad. Going through it all with a more sober and adult level of comprehension offered me some new insights into how our nation and society have come to be where they are now.

The one minor ding is that I believe this was recorded back in 2006, so the presenters do not have the benefit of being able to incorporate or compare with some of the most recent major events in our history. Still, the journey was well worth taking.

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Whitewashed History

You would think that by this point in time that a book on American History would appropriately cover the dark side of this countries history, as well as major movements. The history of indigenous peoples is only glancingly referred to. There is no history of the injustices natives still experience today.
The atrocities of slave life are given only cursory coverage but there was plenty of time for unnecessary anecdotes about military life.
The civil rights movement is barely a footnote, as is the feminist movement, and the internment of Japanese Americans. The history of contemporary American Presidents is suspiciously slanted with praise for Reagan and “successful” wars under both Bush administrations. The history of the Gore Bush election and voting irregularities is only referred to as a recount. There certainly isn’t information on the wars in the Middle East, growing economic disparity, the changes in voting laws and election contribution changes that you would expect in a history of our democracy. Any reasonable history must include a history of its people and not just the history of it’s military, it’s battles and the machinations of military power.
The book closes with “reflections” where some of the glaring omissions are suddenly mentioned without context or background. Shame on Great Courses for putting this out.

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Tremendous course

This is an incredible course. I learned so much that I never knew or understood. I think every American should read or listen to a course like this.

I do wonder, though, how biased the course is toward our own country. For example, in the end, they seem to let the American pioneers off lightly by saying it was mainly disease that wiped out the Indians. I previously had the impression that maltreatment of the Indians held greater blame.

I guess I will have to research and find out.

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