I approached this book with some hesitation, primarily because of my innate distrust of anyone who uses three names, like Orville Vernon Burton. Two names dude, there are people out there with just one, like Cher or Seal who could do with a little restraint on your part.
This book came from the $5 table at my local supermarket and if it wasn’t for the fat guy with more than 8 items in the “quick” checkout I probably would never have read it. What a shame that would have been. About the only U.S. history I have bothered to read is Revolutionary War and Woodrow Wilson onwards. There is a big gap of 150 years there that has only been, for me, broken by a 3 volume history of the Civil War by Shelby Foote.
This book focuses on the years between about 1840 and 1900, centered on Lincoln and the Civil War of course, but covering all of the Reconstruction as well as the reactionary politics and rail road ethics that came to define the last half century before 1900. I learned a whole lot about American history that I never knew before, how the negro (as they were called) gained the vote and then steadily lost it, how the Democrat Party turned from being the slavery party of white supremacists into the liberal left that it is today. What a dance. Great book, well worth the $5. Perhaps even worth $10.
