Don’t Know Much About History review

2006.01.28 — Culture | Books | History | by BB Rodriguez

In Don't Know Much About History, Kenneth C Davis presents an frank look at the history of America from Columbus to mid-2002. His viewpoint incorporates modern scholarship and sensibilities and avoids the traditional oatmeal that America is always right and good, but not in a particularly accusatory or condemning way. It sets a good, confidential tone, preparing the reader for revelations that will surprise and sometimes disturb—there seems to have been more skinning of enemies by early Americans than I was aware of, for example.

The book exposes Andrew Jackson, William T Sherman, and others for their mistreatment of the Indians but doesn't actually condemn them. It explains Washington and Jefferson's ownership of slaves without apologizing for them. It puts them in historical context (somewhat) and lets the reader make his own apologies.

Unfortunately, by spending time examining the ugly traits, the author is forced to gloss over some of the actual accomplishments that made these men pillars of our national history in the first place.... It's fascinating to learn about how Washington more or less accidentally started the French and Indian War as a young officer in the British army, but that's sort of thing is normally a footnote to his resume, not the main text.

Davis also makes some of the traditional mistakes of historians, such as mistaking presidential politics for history, treating peace as just the uneventful time between wars, and focusing on meaningless scandals (his conclusion after a long discourse on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings? "We don't know.")

Davis fails to address the rise of high technology any more than the rise of heavy industry. There's not one word about developments that define modern American culture: cinema, rock-and-roll, suburban sprawl, e-mail, and so on. For Davis, history consists only of war and politics.

Still, Davis addresses the major events we all learn about in school but forget the details of and does so in an engaging and meaningful way. It particularly good for refreshing your memory about events that have some application to today's political climate, as well as learning some of the darker details that might have escaped you the first time. If you're learning all this for the first time, tho, as the title implies, you'll probably be missing some of the more relevant events of American history.

A note to audiophiles: I listened to the unabridged version on CD and found the frequent lengthy timelines to be hard to follow, especially since the narrator doesn't reiterate the year for each event.

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