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Don't Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned (Don't Know Much About...) By Kenneth C. Davis ( HarperCollins )
Release Date: 2004-04-13
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Product Description
Who really discovered America? What was "the shot heard 'round the world"? Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: Did he or didn't he? From the arrival of Columbus through the bizarre election of 2000 and beyond, Davis carries readers on a rollicking ride through more than 500 years of American history. In this updated edition of the classic anti-textbook, he debunks, recounts, and serves up the real story behind the myths and fallacies of American history.
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Amazon.com Review
Finally, someone who tells history like it was, without the old textbook gloss that's put so many students into premature naptime and misinformed the few who stayed awake. Davis corrects the myths and misconceptions from Columbus up through the Clinton administration, and shows that truth is more entertaining than propaganda.
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 Very entertaining ( waldo558 )
Entertaining reading but his liberal bias shows through very clearly. His take on recent America politics, especially Nixon through Clinton, sounds like any NPR listener.
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 Inaccurate, biased, etc. ( daverita@vnet.net )
Mr. Davis really short changes Jamestown, and gets things wrong. The Captain of the ship was Christopher Newport not John Newport. If you want to know what really happened in Jamestown read David Price's book `Love and Hate in Jamestown'. FYI - 12-year-old Pocahontas would have never had a crush on a short, round, red-headed 45-year-old man(Smith).
Disinterested grammar school students could learn from it...they would learn some things that aren't true, but they are disinterested so they will promptly forget them anyway.
Anyone who loves history, or a specific part of history could very likely find themselves annoyed by the things he chooses to ignore and the other things he chooses to harp on forever.
It can be used for a glossed over timeline of events.
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I'll be honest I did not, have not and probably never will sit down and read through this entire book ( lefthandedirish )
No - I intend to continue to use this book as a reference book. Occassionally things come up and I want a quick answer about history, I look it up in a book, this book.
The other night my first grader wanted to know more about the timeline between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. He also wanted to diagram certain events that Presidents encoutered in their presidency. After I closed my mouth and my head stopped spinning, we went to the bookshelf and pulled a number of reference books down to begin our timelines and diagrams. This book saved me - big time.
We were watching National Treasure, and I disputed a fact from the movie, everyone else told me I was crazy, so we looked it up in Don't Know Much About History.
The book begins with the the discovery of America, after the chapter title page there is a summary page of the discussion points you will find in each chapter, usually a brief but relevant synopsis of events. At the end of each chpater is either a breakdown of key informational points or a timeline of events.
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 Interesting ( calvarado1 )
Interesting but not exactly good to learn US history. If you already know US History I highly recommend it. If you want to learn, try something more traditional first.
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 Disappointing
I was hoping to get a nice factual primer on American History when I ordered this book. What I got was a writer projecting his political bias on as many topics as possible. I'm kind of a hybrid Rebuplican/Democrat so I'm far from a right winger. But the left wing slant of this book is obvious and obtrusive from the get go. If this guy wants to impose his political beliefs on others, he should try fiction because history is too important to become an interpretive exercise.
I couldn't recommend this author less.
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Addiction
