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Title: The American Experiment
Author: James MacGregor Burns
Narrator: Mark Ashby
Format: Unabridged
Length: 88 hrs and 26 mins
Language: English
Release date: 03-07-14
Publisher: Audible Studios
Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 119 votes
Genres: History, American
Publisher's Summary:
James MacGregor Burnss stunning trilogy of American history, spanning the birth of the Constitution to the final days of the Cold War. In these three volumes, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winner James MacGregor Burns chronicles with depth and narrative panache the most significant cultural, economic, and political events of American history.
In The Vineyard of Liberty, he combines the color and texture of early American life with meticulous scholarship. Focusing on the tensions leading up to the Civil War, Burns brilliantly shows how Americans became divided over the meaning of Liberty.
In The Workshop of Democracy, Burns explores more than a half-century of dramatic growth and transformation of the American landscape, through the addition of dozens of new states, the shattering tragedy of the First World War, the explosion of industry, and, in the end, the emergence of the United States as a new global power.
And in The Crosswinds of Freedom, Burns offers an articulate and incisive examination of the US during its rise to become the worlds sole superpower - through the Great Depression, the Second World War, the Cold War, and the rapid pace of technological change that gave rise to the American Century.
Members Reviews:
American History ABCs
American History ABCs
This is really three quite different books, each with its own tone, outlook, and period, and they dont quite form a coherent whole (but are a bargain at one credit). I found each book better than the prior book, as the author seems more comfortable with the modern era.
The title is a bit deceptive. I expected The American Experience to be about, well, the Experience of the people of the United States. Instead this is a very basic, conventional, history of the United States from the constitutional convention (after the War for Independence) up to 1980. Like many other US Histories, this focuses primarily on the presidents, and only tangentially on the historical issues each president faced, and almost not at all on the broader themes and tides of history or the minutia of real peoples lives. The books do cover all the conventional keynotes of US history very well.
The one overarching theme the books does seem to explore the meaning of Liberty, and it seems to conclude this has never been quite clear. Other than that, there is very little analysis or thematic context. Until the last book, almost all analysis is added by quoting other historians (making some point this author chooses to emphasize). This leads to a somewhat namby-pamby, term paper sounding, narrative.
Sporadically some non-political aspects of experience are mentioned (arts, crafts, technology, business, living conditions, religion, science, education, sports, etc.), but these tellings are generally in alignment with the somewhat mythical conventional US history and dont provide enough context to provide a true slice of life.
I am always annoyed when historical spending or wages are quoted in a currency with no context or baseline conversion rate. Of course, one cant convert historical dollars to the current rate of exchange for every reader, but a single benchmark (like 1980 dollars) can be used to place all such values in a single, more understandable, context.
