aimiller's Reviews (689)

A fairly basic pop history depiction of the Constitutional Convention. Frankly you might be better off reading the Federalist papers themselves. Cerami pulls no punches when it comes to Hamilton (who doesn't need to be punched anymore, as he ruined his own political career all on his own) and the sheer amount of praise he lavishes Madison with makes "the remarkable story of two men" more like a "drool over Madison" fest. The parts about the debates over the Constitution were interesting to an extent, but in many places they felt unnecessarily drawn out.

An excellent popular history of the Mexican-American War. The author doesn't shy away from the uncomfortable aspects of the war and yet the four different primary perspectives work together to make a complicated tapestry of a history.

A decent piece of historiography, although many of the essays read more as histories than examinations of history as a field and pieces of historiography. My favorite essays included "The Search for a Usable Past", "How the Lost Cause was Lost", "Should the Historian Sit in Judgment?", and "Should the Historian Write Contemporary History?"

Although interesting in terms of the research now available to the general public about the social and economic status of the presidents, I felt like the book was really lacking in the area of cultural analysis that the title/description seemed to offer (which was why I read it in the first place!) I felt like at times it overstated the already-obvious. It's short and fairly easy to get through, though!

So I will say going into this that it took me like 2 months to finish this book because I got behind on other reading, so on top of it being a kind of magical realism-style that I already find confusing (but not a turn off!) I was confused. This is a book I would have loved to read in a class, as I just don't feel smart enough to approach everything that's going on in it--the conversations around blood quantum are like on a level I can't even approach, and the NAGPRA conversation. There's SO MUCH packed into this little book, and I really feel like I barely scratched the surface in my reading, but I'd need a reading buddy to get more out of it.

A decent historiographical look from the early 90s of the study of gender and parts of the British empire, but extremely limited for the most part in scope. It might do what it was supposed to do, and could be a decent resource if you were interested in seeing what was considered important in the field back then, but not so useful to me now.