Reviews for Is America Nuts?

The average rating for Is America Nuts? based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2007-08-16 00:00:00 Mathew Hawn It is infinitely easier to critize a book like this one than it is to write one. Succint, interesting summaries of sweeping historical eras are almost always doomed to failure on some level, and I suppose, in the grand scheme of things, Davis does an Ok job. It's just that his writing is so bad. His prose is littered with pronouns lacking clear antecedents and most irklingly, he constantly repeats proper nouns making for some seriously bumpy, seriously irritating reading: "Almost from the moment Israel was born in 1948 out of their war of independence, Israel occupied a singular, untouchable position in American foreign policy." (pg. 506) What were his editors thinking? How could they let such carelessness get by?? Especially as this is a revised edition??? But maybe lousy writing is what one should learn to expect from New York Times bestsellers???? Then there is his obvious political bias. Ok, so US history is full of dark and horrible moments which need to be brought to light. I think we are all pretty much clear on that point. But Davis goes one step too far with this negativity by taking a cynical view of every single aspect of the nation's history. Surely some events were positive, hopeful or inspirational along the way? Certainly not according to Davis who takes a sick pleasure in highlighting moments of corruption, infamy, crime, power struggles and slaughter while flat-out ignoring brighter moments of the past. It makes for a very one-sided and depressing portrait of a nation which I would not recomend to anyone.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-03-13 00:00:00 Jerry Castillo I read this book as a refresher on American History with a view to sitting a specific exam. In that respect, I suppose the book was successful in achieving my objective. However, I would generally not recommend this book for anything other than as a springboard into further study and thankfully for this purpose Davis provides a very detailed list of further readings for each section. It is a good succinct summary of American history. A distillation, if you will, of a large amount of research and reading. However, I have some serious issues with the book. Firstly, I found the writing style to be poor at times. It is overly journalistic, which I guess does make it more accessible and less dry. However, it is poorly edited, with several instances of vague pronouns or references which Davis does not clarify. Toward the end of the book the author loses his control over adjectives as they get sweepingly over-dramatic with wild metaphors and similies that I would expect to see in a ranting editorial rather than a text book. Secondly, I was constantly shocked by the jagged transitions in the book. While I understand and have no issue with the particular question-and-answer style chosen by Davis, from the middle of the book onward I kept encountering the end of a section followed by an unrelated insertion of an "American Voice" with a line or a paragraph explaining the significance of the excerpt. Then he would launch into a new section once again unrelated to the "American Voice". It felt like the book was once a bigger manuscript which the editor then slashed without going back to smooth over the new transitions. Finally, I would advise that anyone reading this book should be clearly aware of the author's goal, which is to correct the problem of the way American history is taught in schools - poorly, with little critical thinking and often teaching apocryphal stories as facts and with frequent glossing over of the darker aspects. As a result, the overall tone of this book rather negative. Davis starts out with a fairly balanced approach to the founding fathers, describing their intellectual genius as well as their prejudices. He also leaves Teddy Roosevelt and FDR more or less unscathed and the Civil Rights movement is described favourably. But for nearly every other aspect of American history he concentrates on the negative is his attempt to redress US history whitewash taught in the classroom. Ultimately, I have to go back to my comment about treating this as only a springboard into further study or to brush off the cobwebs of earlier education. If I were a teacher I would mark down any essay which relied on this book for research instead of going to the original materials or the more thorough research Davis himself relies on and lists in his "Further Reading" appendix.