The book also ends with this absolute banger: "There will also always be a loyalist party, just as there will always be a certain number of individuals who prefer to live in lodgings, or other people's houses, and do not want a family. Sedentary, professional, or servile occupations often tend to Increase the number of these Loyalists. It is a question of mere calculation for the dominant country how much military force must be used to encourage the loyalist and keep the patriot party below the line of hope; for in the colonies, loyalty, like Napoleon's providence, is altogether a question of heavy artillery."
Particularly relevant now would be "The Creature from Jekyll Island" by G. Edward Griffin, and "A History of Money and Banking in the United States" by Murray Rothbard.
Of course, a read of the "Federalist Papers", while a little more dense, is fundamental.
May 3, 2023·edited May 3, 2023Liked by Holly MathNerd
"I see that if I’m ever going to find a way to be happy, I have to find a way to leave more of my personal past in the past, and put more energy into becoming who I want to be."
What a useful insight. I think this is what is being lost in our current culture at both the individual and societal levels. Lots of incentives (like social cred) being offered to reinterpret the past through an oppressor/victim lens, with people being conditioned into the false belief that a happier future will be the result.
I'd recommend The American Soul, by Jacob Needleman. A profoundly helpful book in understanding the beliefs of the Founders and their vision for this nation.
My US History was a collection of teaching from Pittsburgh and eastern North Carolina, from 8th Grade on. I guess you'd say that what I learned was somewhere in the middle. My teachers taught that most of our founding fathers weren't even Christian; they were deists. So, they insisted on a separation of church and state because they didn't want a single state religion. You have to consider that even in the founding, there were no less than five (and possibly more) denominations of Christianity practiced among the colonists. So, the idea that there would be one state religion as in England was terrifying to them. I didn't learn that the founding was based on racism or slavery. I learned that our founding fathers had IDEALS that all men are created equal, and when Jefferson wrote those words, he meant all men (and women) regardless of skin color. However, the South insisted on their economic institutions built on slavery (if you think about it, it's no different than importing "the Help" from economically depressed countries from Central America - advocated by the same class of people). This was an issue that was bound to come to a head sooner or later, and "four score and seven years" later, the matter was settled in blood. Did the ideal come to fruition instantly? No. But in the 1980s, my perception (as a teenager) was that we had put the worst behind us. It really took this identity Marxist insanity to rip open the scabs of wounds that were still in the process of healing all for the sole cynical purpose of seizing power. My 8th Grade teacher did not use a text book. He dictated a narrative to us that we took notes on and then he directed us to our school library. 9th Grade was Civics. 11th Grade was US History, which was fully nuanced - it wasn't the rah rah 1776 version of History, nor was it the Howard Zinn version of history. It was warts and all history that told an honest story of how we got where we are, acknowledging that we had some dark times. It sucks that the dialectical Left has to insist that its allegedly "honest" narrative is 100% dark and disgusting, but that is how they operate.
It's a chronological retelling of the lead-up to WW2 through primary source material, with little commentary. It's obviously curated (for an editorial purpose) but it gives you a wildly different view of one of the most important events in American history than what you're probably used to.
I have read most of the books from the late historian David McCullogh. In the 90's, his book about Harry Truman made me a great fan of his writing and the under appreciated President Truman. That book convinced me to read about US Presidents as a challenge and a journey to understand US history. Ron Chernow's book on Grant was very satisfying too. I knew so little of the post civil war period that it helped me understand the perils facing the Southern states. As a guest in your country, I wanted a deeper understanding of the foundations and the biography on John Adam's by McCullogh was like reading a spy novel. Robert Merry's book on the amazing one term of James K Polk is one I highly recommend as it covers not only controversy but an ability to manage Congress and events in an exacting manner. Though I tend to be very dismissive of her personal politics, Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals: The Genius of Abraham Lincoln" is as good as it gets in the books on Lincoln. Since I know you are technically inclined, try McCullogh's books on the "Brooklyn Bridge" and/or "The Wright Brothers" (which I re-read since the achievements of the brothers Wright are extraordinary. Their "test driven design" of the first flight is remarkable. Good luck on your journey and thanks for posting on Substack and being as honest a scribe as I have known.
I don’t know if you prefer reading to listening, but I’ve found the lecture courses offered by The Great Courses (formerly, The Teaching Company) to be particularly good for history. I’ve mostly stuck to the Greek and Roman stuff myself, but from what I can tell the organization had some pretty high standards for who they selected as their lectures. Writing this actually has me wanting to listen to their courses on American history to see what I think.
If you want an understanding of the military history of the US, I cannot recommend anything by Rick Atkinson enough. I’m reading “The British Are Coming” now and it captures the Revolutionary War in a very readable way. His “Liberation Trilogy” is the acme of the story of American forces in Europe in the Second World War.
Personally, I've found that by studying the 1960s, our current moment makes a lot more sense. Our country, in it's modern form, was forged in the 60s.
I really liked "Great Society: A New History" by Amity Shlaes. I haven't read her other books, but they're definitely on my reading list.
Another great read (this one pertaining to the military) is "Dereliction of Duty" by H.R. McMaster. It's very illuminating on how our leaders got us involved in French Indo-China.
This one is fiction and also pertains to the military: Anton Myrer's "Once an Eagle". In my opinion, it's the definitive American military novel to which all others should be compared. For a few years of my life, I worked towards being an officer because of this book.
Back to non-fiction, anything by Thomas Sowell is worth reading. I've completely changed how I think about culture and race because of his writings. "Ethnic America" was extremely interesting. I'll admit that I didn't read it. You can get a lot of his books for free on Audible. They really are 100% worth the time and money.
I think it was about three years ago. I think it was Ken Burns, who is somewhat noted for his documentaries on civil rights, baseball and Vietnam. They are on the public broadcasting tv. I was very impressed by his doc. On Vietnam. I also had my husband sitting watching it, he protested against the war, his best friend went to war. I thought that was well done.
I know American education is crap. I am 63 and all I remember was the founding fathers. No talk of current events, what part various ethnicities have played in our freedom, and the coercive methods out government has used to get what it wants. Good luck with your next adventure.
"The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution" by Bernard Bailyn. You seem like a thinker who needs some "why" to go with the "what" and this will supply that.
Some of the individual entries in the "Oxford History of the United States" series are very good indeed -- straightforward narrative histories that steer clear of faddish interpretive bafflegab. I particularly liked "What Hath God Wrought" by Daniel Walker Howe as it covers a period often given short shrift in American history courses -- the period between the War of 1812 and the Civil War. I haven't read all the volumes but the ones I have were all good.
Try The Year of Decision: 1846 by Bernard DeVoto. What was happening that year in the West? The Mexican War, the Donner party getting lost in the mountains, the Mormon trek to Salt Lake City, Stephen Kearny and the army to Santa Fe, and a thousand other journeys great and small. In an epilogue, set a couple of years later, a man bends down to pick something shiny out of a California stream, and the Gold Rush is on. DeVoto is a brilliant, idiosyncratic historian and writer, and he has a mesmerizing tale to tell. I think his vision of American history falls about midway between what you were taught in high school and what you were taught in college, which seems like a good place to be. My edition was published in 1943, but the book has been reprinted. https://www.abebooks.com/9780312267940/Year-Decision-1846-DeVoto-Bernard-0312267940/plp
You're going to have a lot of reading to do! If you'd like to take a break and watch something instead, the HBO seven-part series "John Adams," starring Paul Giamatti, is very well done and solidly based on David McCullough's biography of the same name.
“My new project is to educate myself on US history. I’ve ordered some textbooks (mostly from the pre-Woke era) on Amazon and found some YouTube channels with courses online.”
Sorry if this is off topic, but the “pre-woke era” part caught my attention. So this is a thing! I’ve taken recently to seeking out movies and shows on the streaming services that are at least 10 years old. It’s becoming tiresome to sit halfway through a movie now when this bring out the woke club and start beating me over the head with it. And having invested half an hour on the show, it sucks to have to turn it off in disgust.
Douglas Murray has an excellent series (10 episodes) on Youtube / podcasts called "Uncancelled History" that seeks to un-cancel previously cancelled dead (white) guys.
The True History of the American Revolution - Sydney George Fisher, Published in 1902
Read the excerpt from the preface in the Amazon description: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1499382928/
The book also ends with this absolute banger: "There will also always be a loyalist party, just as there will always be a certain number of individuals who prefer to live in lodgings, or other people's houses, and do not want a family. Sedentary, professional, or servile occupations often tend to Increase the number of these Loyalists. It is a question of mere calculation for the dominant country how much military force must be used to encourage the loyalist and keep the patriot party below the line of hope; for in the colonies, loyalty, like Napoleon's providence, is altogether a question of heavy artillery."
Here’s a few:
“A Renegade History of the United States“ by Thaddeus Russell
“The Creature from Jekyll Island” by G. Edward Griffin
Particularly relevant now would be "The Creature from Jekyll Island" by G. Edward Griffin, and "A History of Money and Banking in the United States" by Murray Rothbard.
Of course, a read of the "Federalist Papers", while a little more dense, is fundamental.
"I see that if I’m ever going to find a way to be happy, I have to find a way to leave more of my personal past in the past, and put more energy into becoming who I want to be."
What a useful insight. I think this is what is being lost in our current culture at both the individual and societal levels. Lots of incentives (like social cred) being offered to reinterpret the past through an oppressor/victim lens, with people being conditioned into the false belief that a happier future will be the result.
I'd recommend The American Soul, by Jacob Needleman. A profoundly helpful book in understanding the beliefs of the Founders and their vision for this nation.
https://a.co/d/98W9OA0
My US History was a collection of teaching from Pittsburgh and eastern North Carolina, from 8th Grade on. I guess you'd say that what I learned was somewhere in the middle. My teachers taught that most of our founding fathers weren't even Christian; they were deists. So, they insisted on a separation of church and state because they didn't want a single state religion. You have to consider that even in the founding, there were no less than five (and possibly more) denominations of Christianity practiced among the colonists. So, the idea that there would be one state religion as in England was terrifying to them. I didn't learn that the founding was based on racism or slavery. I learned that our founding fathers had IDEALS that all men are created equal, and when Jefferson wrote those words, he meant all men (and women) regardless of skin color. However, the South insisted on their economic institutions built on slavery (if you think about it, it's no different than importing "the Help" from economically depressed countries from Central America - advocated by the same class of people). This was an issue that was bound to come to a head sooner or later, and "four score and seven years" later, the matter was settled in blood. Did the ideal come to fruition instantly? No. But in the 1980s, my perception (as a teenager) was that we had put the worst behind us. It really took this identity Marxist insanity to rip open the scabs of wounds that were still in the process of healing all for the sole cynical purpose of seizing power. My 8th Grade teacher did not use a text book. He dictated a narrative to us that we took notes on and then he directed us to our school library. 9th Grade was Civics. 11th Grade was US History, which was fully nuanced - it wasn't the rah rah 1776 version of History, nor was it the Howard Zinn version of history. It was warts and all history that told an honest story of how we got where we are, acknowledging that we had some dark times. It sucks that the dialectical Left has to insist that its allegedly "honest" narrative is 100% dark and disgusting, but that is how they operate.
It's not purely American history, but I think it's very informative about one of the more recent foundational aspects of the US:
Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker: https://www.amazon.com/Human-Smoke-Beginnings-World-Civilization/dp/1416572465
It's a chronological retelling of the lead-up to WW2 through primary source material, with little commentary. It's obviously curated (for an editorial purpose) but it gives you a wildly different view of one of the most important events in American history than what you're probably used to.
I have read most of the books from the late historian David McCullogh. In the 90's, his book about Harry Truman made me a great fan of his writing and the under appreciated President Truman. That book convinced me to read about US Presidents as a challenge and a journey to understand US history. Ron Chernow's book on Grant was very satisfying too. I knew so little of the post civil war period that it helped me understand the perils facing the Southern states. As a guest in your country, I wanted a deeper understanding of the foundations and the biography on John Adam's by McCullogh was like reading a spy novel. Robert Merry's book on the amazing one term of James K Polk is one I highly recommend as it covers not only controversy but an ability to manage Congress and events in an exacting manner. Though I tend to be very dismissive of her personal politics, Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals: The Genius of Abraham Lincoln" is as good as it gets in the books on Lincoln. Since I know you are technically inclined, try McCullogh's books on the "Brooklyn Bridge" and/or "The Wright Brothers" (which I re-read since the achievements of the brothers Wright are extraordinary. Their "test driven design" of the first flight is remarkable. Good luck on your journey and thanks for posting on Substack and being as honest a scribe as I have known.
I don’t know if you prefer reading to listening, but I’ve found the lecture courses offered by The Great Courses (formerly, The Teaching Company) to be particularly good for history. I’ve mostly stuck to the Greek and Roman stuff myself, but from what I can tell the organization had some pretty high standards for who they selected as their lectures. Writing this actually has me wanting to listen to their courses on American history to see what I think.
If you want an understanding of the military history of the US, I cannot recommend anything by Rick Atkinson enough. I’m reading “The British Are Coming” now and it captures the Revolutionary War in a very readable way. His “Liberation Trilogy” is the acme of the story of American forces in Europe in the Second World War.
Personally, I've found that by studying the 1960s, our current moment makes a lot more sense. Our country, in it's modern form, was forged in the 60s.
I really liked "Great Society: A New History" by Amity Shlaes. I haven't read her other books, but they're definitely on my reading list.
Another great read (this one pertaining to the military) is "Dereliction of Duty" by H.R. McMaster. It's very illuminating on how our leaders got us involved in French Indo-China.
This one is fiction and also pertains to the military: Anton Myrer's "Once an Eagle". In my opinion, it's the definitive American military novel to which all others should be compared. For a few years of my life, I worked towards being an officer because of this book.
Back to non-fiction, anything by Thomas Sowell is worth reading. I've completely changed how I think about culture and race because of his writings. "Ethnic America" was extremely interesting. I'll admit that I didn't read it. You can get a lot of his books for free on Audible. They really are 100% worth the time and money.
I think it was about three years ago. I think it was Ken Burns, who is somewhat noted for his documentaries on civil rights, baseball and Vietnam. They are on the public broadcasting tv. I was very impressed by his doc. On Vietnam. I also had my husband sitting watching it, he protested against the war, his best friend went to war. I thought that was well done.
I know American education is crap. I am 63 and all I remember was the founding fathers. No talk of current events, what part various ethnicities have played in our freedom, and the coercive methods out government has used to get what it wants. Good luck with your next adventure.
"The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution" by Bernard Bailyn. You seem like a thinker who needs some "why" to go with the "what" and this will supply that.
Some of the individual entries in the "Oxford History of the United States" series are very good indeed -- straightforward narrative histories that steer clear of faddish interpretive bafflegab. I particularly liked "What Hath God Wrought" by Daniel Walker Howe as it covers a period often given short shrift in American history courses -- the period between the War of 1812 and the Civil War. I haven't read all the volumes but the ones I have were all good.
Try The Year of Decision: 1846 by Bernard DeVoto. What was happening that year in the West? The Mexican War, the Donner party getting lost in the mountains, the Mormon trek to Salt Lake City, Stephen Kearny and the army to Santa Fe, and a thousand other journeys great and small. In an epilogue, set a couple of years later, a man bends down to pick something shiny out of a California stream, and the Gold Rush is on. DeVoto is a brilliant, idiosyncratic historian and writer, and he has a mesmerizing tale to tell. I think his vision of American history falls about midway between what you were taught in high school and what you were taught in college, which seems like a good place to be. My edition was published in 1943, but the book has been reprinted. https://www.abebooks.com/9780312267940/Year-Decision-1846-DeVoto-Bernard-0312267940/plp
You're going to have a lot of reading to do! If you'd like to take a break and watch something instead, the HBO seven-part series "John Adams," starring Paul Giamatti, is very well done and solidly based on David McCullough's biography of the same name.
https://www.hbo.com/john-adams
“My new project is to educate myself on US history. I’ve ordered some textbooks (mostly from the pre-Woke era) on Amazon and found some YouTube channels with courses online.”
Sorry if this is off topic, but the “pre-woke era” part caught my attention. So this is a thing! I’ve taken recently to seeking out movies and shows on the streaming services that are at least 10 years old. It’s becoming tiresome to sit halfway through a movie now when this bring out the woke club and start beating me over the head with it. And having invested half an hour on the show, it sucks to have to turn it off in disgust.
Douglas Murray has an excellent series (10 episodes) on Youtube / podcasts called "Uncancelled History" that seeks to un-cancel previously cancelled dead (white) guys.