Reviews for American Century A History of the United States Since 1941

The average rating for American Century A History of the United States Since 1941 based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-03-13 00:00:00 Michael Knowles A good history of early colonial Peruvian society ... except for the native Peruvians. After drudging through the dull sections on the encomenderos and the aristocracy, plenty of good material on merchants, sailors, artisans, foreigners, all of whom merit little attention in most discussion of the Spanish colonies (especially in the Conquest generation). Paints a picture of a more settled and diverse colony than I would have expected, especially so early. As this is based on historical documents, information becomes scarcer as class and caste get lower. The discussion of Africans isn't bad for freedmen, while slaves are for the most part treated like a commodity. Spanish women were more prevalent in early Peru than I would have expected. The discussion of Central Americans in Spanish Peru is good, though one imagines it would be much more thorough now that Lockhart has turned his attention to the natives of New Spain. And "town Indians" get their due, at least the well-off elites do. But while one gets a much clearer view of Spanish colonial society than is found in many other places, the admitted absence of the vast majority of the population makes this a useful but incomplete volume requiring other resources to fully appreciate.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-11-18 00:00:00 David Brau This book had a number of problems, starting off in the glossary which identifies Ramadan as usually starting on November 16. The problem being that it's August as I read this book, and I'm aware that it is also Ramadan. I don't know if this was the mistake of a careless editor or the author who happened to be writing and researching at a time when Ramadan was falling in November, but it immediately cast a shadow of doubt on everything else I read. Not that reading this book was in anyway enjoyable. McCauley's book reads like the lecture notes of a student taking a class on Central Asia. There was little evidence of any thought for craft or organization beyond rough thematic paragraphs. He strung his facts together, sentence after sentence, with no transitions, connections, or explanations. An example, from his chapter "The Great Game" - "In 1992, the railway between Urumchi, Xinjiang and Almaty, Kazakhstan began operation. Many other border crossings have been opened since then. A major complaint of the Chinese is that Central Asian states engage in barter because of lack of hard currency." From railroads to international commerce in the blink of an eye. It was if McCauley had an incredibly inflexible word count he had to stay under and too many facts to relate. Though if that were the case, then why the publisher chose to pepper the margins of each page with important sentences from the page, I don't know. Their only function seems to be to push the book past 150 pages. The writing was not only unskilled, but occasionally in poor taste as well. He casually threw out references to things like drug use among leaders without any attempt to give supporting evidence or explain why this information was crucial to the topic at hand. I sometimes felt as if I were reading a tabloid's attempt at a serious article. I would like to believe that what I read was at least factually correct, but I can't help but think this book was a waste of time and money.