Reviews for Geographic influences in American history

The average rating for Geographic influences in American history based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-01-08 00:00:00 Travis Wilson I liked this book and found its basic idea intriguing. However, as the book progressed, in particular as it addressed elements of history I am knowledgeable about, I saw that the authors' scholarship was sometimes shoddy; they misused elements of history they knew superficially or not at all in ways that made me doubt them generally. Essentially, I encountered this often enough to begin suspecting they were simply assuming their overall theory was correct and had not done the rigorous work of truly penetrating those moments in our history to see if their hypothesis stood up to such analysis. Nonetheless, I also had the sense that they were on to something. I'm not sure exactly what that something is, and I'm also quite doubtful that their own sense of what they've "discovered" is almost surely mostly wrong, but even so, they've opened up a manner of understanding American History that might be profitably explored, and at this point, this book is worth considering because of the window it may open on that manner of seeing this history. I don't think a reader needs to read the whole book; not surprisingly, it's when they begin speculating about the future that they are treading on the most dangerous ground, which they can hardly be blamed for-- even if their scholarship was more rigorous and reliable, making predictions about a near future that their readers would be living within the moment would be nearly impossible. Additionally, one can get the jist of their thinking by reading perhaps 150-200 pp. Still, though I give the book only three stars, I still rather heartily recommend that readers give it that 150-200 pp chance.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-09-14 00:00:00 Ilkka Nivala There are several aspects of this book to review. Writing style: a bit dry. This is forgivable: the authors are laying out a hypothesis that covers almost 500 years of American history, and they want to make sure you've got all their evidence. I figure the book could've been tightened up, but I guess it's better they erred on the side of too much explanation rather than not enough. The generational theory: plausible and fascinating. The authors summarize the history of 14 generations of Americans, showing how each generation fits into a cycle of four types and how these types interact. At the same time, they detail how American history alternates between spiritual awakenings and crises that usually hit at predictable intervals. It takes a while to get through this part of the book, but it's interesting to see the patterns develop. The predictions: some hits, some misses. By now, 17 years after first publication, there's been time to see if the authors' theories would hold up. They've been doing better at cultural trends rather than events. I don't place the "alienating event" they thought would hit in the 1990s, but they did a fine job of describing the culture of helicopter parents years before that became a catchphrase. Still, it's hard to watch the economy crash, hear about environmental problems settling in, catch the news on the latest terrorist attack, and not think of their predicted Crisis of 2020, more or less on schedule. The book will take time to get through (and you could skim parts of it), but there are worse ways to spend your free time.