This book focuses on United States history. I love history, and am generally not a fan of United States history, so I wasn't sure I would make it through this book without being bored to absolute insanity. I have read a lot of reviews about this book, and it has been discussed a few times in this Non-Fiction book group that I am part of. Based on the comments, I was expecting this to be pretty much the worst US History book ever written. The author did his research into each event/time period he wrote about, and I appreciated that. The writing style was good, not boring like I assumed. I will not say that this was my favorite history book, or that I loved it, but I did like it. I thought there were a lot of really good points in it, and it was nice to see a book that wasn't written based solely on an idea of American nationalism where the people did nothing wrong ever. I would say that this book offers a nice supplemental perspective to some of the current history textbooks.

A lot of the things that I was personally taught in elementary and high school were VERY whitewashed. Everything centered around these AMAZING white men, who traveled to this continent and perpetrated genocide and subjugation. Of course, I respect the work that was put into creating the Constitution and other documents that formed a country that I was born and raised in. I certainly would not know how to go about forming a country. There were a lot of brave people who stood up for what they believed in, whether it was wrong or right, and gave their lives for their beliefs. I have people in my ancestry (which I have had a great time researching) that have fought in the American Revolution and Civil War on both sides of the spectrum, and cannot pretend to know their reasons or circumstances. I think that it is a shame that students (at least where I went to school) were not told all the details about the genocide of Native Americans, and are told about the skirmishes, wars, and murders as though Native people weren't well within their right. I think it is a shame that we were not taught about servants in the White House being black, or about key figures in history being mixed race. People are really just DETERMINED that forced labor and inequality were not used to build this country, and that is really an obtuse thing to think. People will never learn or grow as people, or as a collective country, without reviewing all of the facts of history as they are, not how we wish they were or want them to be.