Reviews for America: The Last Best Hope, Volume 2: From a World at War to the Triumph of Freedom

The average rating for America: The Last Best Hope, Volume 2: From a World at War to the Triumph of Freedom based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-01-08 00:00:00 Jeff Goodwin If you're a Zinn fan, this will be the worst book you have ever read. Bennett focuses on American History from a reverent perspective, painting it, as he says "With warts and all...but not only warts." A great read for teachers, as it's chock full of little-known anecdotes. My favorite? A "cup of joe" is named after Josephus Daniels...who got rid of the Naval rum ration in favor of coffee. My friends are very tired of hearing me bring this up on Sunday mornings.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-07-26 00:00:00 Paul Janowiak Volume Two of Bennett's history survey takes us from the turn of the century through Reagan's second term. Bennett is a patriot, so you Howard Zinn fans will hate this book - if you like American you may find this refreshing. Bennett presents our history warts and all, but avoids the continual bashing that some textbooks focus. Probably the best example of this patriotic but balanced history is the coverage of the Vietnam War. Yes, we widened the war when we made incursions into Cambodia, but most texts ignore that the Cambodians wanted us there since the Viet Cong were invading their country. Further the bombings were successful and helped lead to the Paris peace accords. Bennett discusses our shameful behavior after we left Vietnam. We agreed to lend air support in order to defend the South Vietnamese. When the North realized that we were cutting and running, the south fell within two years, the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia and 2 million died; all this because we wouldn't do a little high altitude bombing. Most texts cover this incident in just the opposite fashion -- it was bad to widen the war, but it was honorable and right that we abandoned the South Vietnamese and Cambodians.