Reddit reviews What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (Oxford History of the United States)
We found 7 Reddit comments about What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (Oxford History of the United States). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
It's time once again for the AskHistorians Book Giveaway! Our lucky winner this month is Vlad! The selection of books we have available this month are:
Want a chance to get a free book? Help support the podcast via Patreon!
Do you have anything specific you are interested in?
These are just some off the top of my head: http://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/0743296281/ref=pd_sim_b_1
http://www.amazon.com/Death-Haymarket-Chicago-Movement-Bombing/dp/1400033225/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335220339&sr=1-2
http://www.amazon.com/An-American-Betrayal-Cherokee-Patriots/dp/0805089551/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335220408&sr=1-4
http://www.amazon.com/Sin-Second-City-Ministers-Playboys/dp/0812975995/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335220450&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/The-Hanging-Thomas-Jeremiah-Encounter/dp/0300171323/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335220494&sr=1-1 (this is my favorite out of all of them)
http://www.amazon.com/The-Rise-American-Democracy-Jefferson/dp/0393329216/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335220469&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/What-Hath-God-Wrought-Transformation/dp/0195392434/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335220477&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/Muckraking-Landmark-Articles-Ellen-Fitzpatrick/dp/0312089449/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335220555&sr=8-1
The Mexican-American War is a very under taught part of history. If you've got time for a book, read What Hath God Wrought. Which covers most of that time period. Quite a lot actually happened. War of 1812. Battles over the Bank of the US. Indian removal. Creations of telegraph and building of many canals, and the beginning of railroads. Indian removal, and the westward spread of the country. Political battles over the spread of slavery to new states.
For understanding modern world history, Eric Hobsbawm is the best starting point.
Hobsbawm is a Marxist historian and it shows in his work. But even the deeply conservative Niall Ferguson wrote that "his great tetralogy . . . remains the best introduction to modern world history in the English language."
The other modern world history I want to mention is [The Birth of the Modern World] (http://www.amazon.com/Birth-Modern-World-1780-1914/dp/0631236163/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374136637&sr=1-1&keywords=birth+of+the+modern+world). It offers another perspective on the "long 19th century" and, as it is written by a very conservative historian forty years after The Age of Revolution, a nice contrast/counterbalance to Hobsbawm's work.
[A History of the Middle East] (http://www.amazon.com/History-Middle-East-Peter-Mansfield/dp/0143034332/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374137117&sr=8-1&keywords=history+of+the+middle+east) is a great introduction to Middle Eastern history and politics which is unbiased, factual, and comprehensive.
[The Great Chinese Revolution 1800-1985] (http://www.amazon.com/Great-Chinese-Revolution-1800-1985/dp/006039076X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374137415&sr=1-2&keywords=great+revolution+china) is an excellent book on the birth of modern China. In it, John King Fairbank tries to show the dynamism of Chinese society and that western forces have had much less influence than the western historians who have framed the traditional story seem to believe.
US History
I am typically reading Two books at a time. One fiction and one Non-Fiction.
Currently I am reading
Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
and
What God Hath Wrought by Daniel Walker Howe
Because yes...I am a history nerd.
Sadly though I am not reading either of these very quickly because I am too busy chronicling this nation's slow descent into self-parody by reading a bunch of news articles and stuff far too often.
MacArthur's landing at Inch'on was perhaps the second greatest achievement in American military history, second only to Winfield Scott's Battle of Veracruz. Both are regularly studied today at military institutions. Yes, MacArthur overstepped his bounds, but Truman is often forgiven because people tend to look at Europe rather than Asia in the post-WWII era. Truman did fantastically well in Europe but completely ignored Asia. Yet, MacArthur predicted the U.S.'s inaction in Korea would have consequences generations later.
Sources: William Manchester's [American Caesar] (http://www.amazon.com/American-Caesar-Douglas-MacArthur-1880/dp/0316024740) and Daniel Howe's What Hath God Wrought.
I would argue that history and economics are probably better ways to get a view into politics than trying to learn about politics directly. I listened to this course about economics:
https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/economics-3rd-edition.html
The Freakonomics Podcast can be pretty good (in moments, there's a lot of fluff), because even though I suspect the two main contributors are liberal, Stephen Levitt, when he's on says a lot of reasonably objective things about why people behave the way you do and why some policy that's left or right is inefficient.
And then a lot of my American History came from this book which is part of a series: https://www.amazon.com/What-Hath-God-Wrought-Transformation/dp/0195392434 Really gave me a pretty good sense of how bad politics used to be and it also paints a picture of the frontiersman conservative ideology, that you can draw a line from how they felt about politics back then to why some Conservatives feel that way now. We think in terms of "Liberal" and "Conservative" but that's not really a great divide, because there are dozens of voting blocs in the US and they've all been better or worse represented by one of the political parties at various points in times.