Good General history of the US

After graduating from college I've been going back and looking more into American history on my own and am interested in recommendations for a good single volume history of the US. I've already read a People's History and burned out on Zinn about halfway through. His negative view of everything and obsession with the country's mistakes got boring after a couple hundred pages. I've been considering a Patriot's History but looking at that it seems to have similar problems just at the other end of the spectrum.

Good question. Wish I had an answer for you.

People's History was basically my eighth-grade textbook. I hate the thing. Yeah, Patriot's History sounds like the inverse.

I have always like Samuel Eliot Morison's "History of the American People." It's a fairly conservative take from a Boston Brahmin's point of view, but it's readable, reasonably accurate, and enjoyable. It's a good starting point, and one can always jump off from it to find other points of view when you disagree with him - and I'm sure you will as I have. He's an old school historian who did most of his work in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, including a monumental study of the US Navy in WWII.

2> "Good question. Wish I had an answer for you."

Me, too. Paul Johnson's A History of the American People isn't it either. I home-schooled a very smart daughter the last two years of high school and American History was one of our subjects. I searched high and low for a single volume history that 1) wasn't agenda driven and 2) she would read. I never found it so spent a huge amount of time picking out chapters and excerpts from high-quality histories on narrow topics. (Reading an immense amount in the process).

The OpenCourseWare website for MIT (digging a little) lists a two-semester American History class taught by Pauline Maier (author of the excellent Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788) which uses a volume of Inventing America each semester, maybe not surprising because Maier co-authored the book. Expensive, but I'd look at a library copy if I had to do the teaching over again. And it's two volumes. Did I mention expensive?

I, too, don't have an easy answer here. Morison's Oxford History of the American People is very dated (published 1965). Johnson and Zinn both wear their agendas on their sleeves (one left, one right), so neither is really suitable as a general introduction.

I kind of recall being in a discussion of this very topic at another forum, some years back. As I remember, the conclusion was that people should start by getting ahold of a good, college level (not high-school) US history textbook. I don't have any specific recommendations; maybe we have some history teachers among the group membership who could offer some.

It's odd . . . I could think of three or four recommendations for a good single-volume world history book, but not so much for a U. S. history book (which only has to cover 400 years, instead of 5,000). Go figure. That said . . .

Tindall and Shi's America: A Narrative History is a standard textbook: workmanlike, over-stuffed with detail, and massive (even the "brief edition" tops out at something like 1500 pages). That said, as textbooks go, it has a good reputation. Many of my colleagues swear by it. (Then again, many of their students probably swear at it.)

Eric Foner's Give Me Liberty! has the same elephantine proportions as T&S, but two huge advantages: A single narrative voice, and the fact that the voice is Foner's. He's one of the most respected historians of his generation, a superb writer, and an innovative thinker.

I wouldn't really recommend either as recreational reading, though. :-)

If you can live with two volumes, instead of one, I'd go with this pair, which are thematically rather than chronologically dovetailed:

Eric Foner's The Story of American Freedom sounds like it's a right-wing, my-country-right-or-wrong opus, but it's actually a tour of American political/social/cultural history organized around the concept of freedom and liberty. It's a masterful take on the Big Picture of U. S. history.

Walter A. McDougall's Promised Land, Crusader State is an non-specialist's overview of U. S. diplomatic history and foreign policy . . . by a historian who wrote one of the best encounters-between-cultures books I've ever read (Let the Sea Make a Noise).

Even taken together, those two books leave out a lot (they're comparatively light on domestic commerce, industry, technology, everyday life, high culture, popular entertainment, etc.) but they've very good at conveying a sense of U. S. history as an organic whole rather than a pile of facts.

I've read the first few volumes of the "A People's History . . . " series by Page Smith. It is an 8 volume set but I believe it ends in the 1920's. I am not sure if he died before completing the work or if he planned to stop where he did. The volumes I read were pretty well balanced and very readable.

I'd recommend Paul Johnson's History of the American People, Alistair Cooke's Alistair Cooke's America, and Daniel Boorstin's three-volume The Americans.

As it happens, this very issue came up today at a blog I follow, and someone mentioned a possibility, A Short History of the United States by Robert Remini

Early, but dated History of America by william robertson is great for early america. Also check out Abbe Raynal's History of Trade and Settlement in the East and West Indies. Both were published around 1765 and are full of maps. Anything by Kenneth Stammp is also a winner.

This just caught my eye The Penguin History of the USA: New edition. Has anyone read it?

I liked Remini's A Short History of the United States but it's been heavily criticized by scholars for having several glaring errors.

A VERY short overview is Link Hullar's 200-page The United States: A Brief Narrative History.

For home schooling (which was mentioned in the thread), I think Joy Hakim's 11-volume A History of US is the best. It's aimed at middle school age students, I believe.

I'm currently reading America, Empire of Liberty by David Reynolds, which seems like it is a good choice for a one-volume US history.

My students have generally liked H.W. Brands, American Stories (no link for this here on LT). Almost every college textbook will be in two volumes, so there's not much of a chance to get around that unless you look outside textbooks and broaden it to monographs and overarching narratives.

If you can live with two volumes, I'd suggest John Garraty's The American Nation. The older editions are better than the newer, as the latter seem to have been shortened and generally 'dumbed down' I also like the Page Smith (if you wants lots of detail) and Paul Johnson works already mentioned.