As a grad student in American History, I hoped this book would give me a brief but useful overview of the role of labor in history. While this is definitely a "short" work, it highlights late 19th and early 20th century labor movements at the expense of early material. Indeed, he only devotes 20 pages for the colonial period, Revolution, and all pre-Civil War developments! How stingy!

My disappointment is partially a measure of my interest in Revolutionary history and the shift from artisans to wage laborers. This early material is both fascinating and relevant for all sorts of later trends. If you share my interests, I recommend you run an Amazon search on authors such as Bruce Laurie, Merritt Roe Smith (a bit later but really interesting), Charles Dew, and Gordon Wood, to name a few. If you are interested in post-Civil War developments, this book may be just right for you: it is concise and easy to read, in spite of more than a few small errors. This is no more than an introduction and survey, but it can bring you up to speed on basic concepts very quickly.

I was very pleasantly surprised by Le Blanc's 22 page bibliographic essay and 19 page glossary. (He also includes a timeline and chronology, if you're into that sort of thing.) These sections are very useful as a quick reference while reading the book and afterward. The bibliographic essay points you to a broad spectrum of movies, documentaries, and books that should satisfy anyone's interests and needs (I can't wait to rent "On the Waterfront" and "Roger and Me" -- they sound great).

For the author the working class for its own wellbeing must be unified against the predations and exploitations of employers. The book focuses on the historical existence and effectiveness of worker solidarity as primarily exercised through unions.

The need for working class solidarity arose as formerly independent craftsmen were forced into a factory system producing for an expansive capitalistic market and in the process lost control of their economic lives. Worker organizations such as the Knights of Labor, the Wobblies, and craft-based unions attempted to address this transformation and the accompanying brutal working conditions. Le Blanc clearly outlines their struggles: the extreme cyclic nature of late 19th century capitalism undercut worker militancy; racial, ethnic, religious, gender and skill differences undermined solidarity; employers mounted intense and often violent opposition with state support.

A main theme of the book is the effect on worker solidarity when union bureaucrats seek accommodation with business or rely on the state for survival. Gompers, first president of the AFL, eschewed worker militance in cooperating with the National Civic Federation and then the Wilson administration during WWI. Later, New Deal labor legislation as elaborated and implemented by the War Labor Board of WWII essentially prohibited workers from any exercise of power on shop-floors. Union leaders demonstrated a willingness to purge dissidents, pandering to red-scare mania, and to enforce contracts that traded economic gains for union members in exchange for unchallenged management control of workplaces - an unspoken social compact that has been shredded in the era of globalization.

The author points to some recent developments within and outside the labor movement as a result of the recognition of the poverty of post-WWII labor leadership. But a weakness of the book, since it purports to discuss the working class, is any real feel for the general citizenry's views on the need for worker activism. What have been the effects of consumerism and of the stunted and stilted information provided by media giants on the American public? Overall the book is a reasonably good introduction as to how the working class has fared over the last 150 years. Though not a fault of the author, the future of the working class emerges from this book as a very precarious project.

there is a newer edition out there. this one is way out of date and shows how long "cool" stuff lasts in the windy city. Better get off of that moneyclip and spring for the newer one.

Not only do you find all you want to know about Chicago, you get an appetite just by reading it upfront. It was a great help to my visit.

very easy to read and quite descriptive= having the focus on neighborhoods helped a great deal. this would not be my first book of choice for chicago -go to the green guide or lonely planet if possible- but the information is helpful and easy to access

I am a senior enrolled in the AP European history class at my school. This year the class switched to a new textbook, which happened to be The Western Heritage. We were all excited that the new textbook had large, colorful pictures and not just pages of lengthy text. As the year progressed, my classmates and I noticed how poor the book was. Many of the key concepts were explained in a way that was complicated and unenlightening. The book greatly confused many students on significant practices of the Catholic church during the Middle Ages. The chapters are quite inconsistent. Some chapters are written fairly well, while others are cluttered and downright terrible. Each chapter is quite lengthy and is often hard to read or sleep-inducing. The organization of ideas is poorly done. Chronological events are separated by material that is either unrelated to any previous events, or do not occur until decades later. Recently, I read the chapter on the rise of fascist empires in Italy and Germany. Some major terminology that we all know was mysteriously missing -- I could not find the word "Autobahn" anywhere in the endless sea of words, but maybe the publisher suddenly ran out of ink and just couldn't print the word on the page. Alas...
So, in conclusion, I suggest you steer clear of this textbook unless you are stimulated by lots of colorful pictures and enjoy reading books that are more suitable for gathering dust.

I am a freshman in high school, and this is my textbook in my AP European History class.

The events depicted are often out of order, making it harder to understand the timeline. The writing seems inconsistent, sometimes short and understandable but often is long-winded and unclear. The authors of this book assume you have some knowledge of both of the geography in Europe and at least some knowledge of Europe's history already. In most of my fellow students' case, they assume wrong. If you do not already have some experience in studying Europe, then I would recommend searching for a different book.

I am a junior in an AP European History class. My class uses two textbooks, one of which is Kagan's Western Heritage. The Kagan textbook is by far my favorite of the two textbooks to read. It is very interesting and thoroughly covers all the topics of European history, many of which are skipped in my other textbook. I am even considering buying the book so I can read the chapters my class skipped and keep it on hand as a reference. The order of the chapters is not at all difficult to follow as long as the reader has a basic knowledge of European History or looks at the timelines at the beginning of each section. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Europe.

If you'e ever wondered exactly what it is that a book editor does, read this volume and discover what happens when a book goes directly to print without any editing, proofreading or even spellchecking. The result is a confused jumble of facts, so poorly organized that the reader has trouble simply trying to figure out the sequence of events described.

Beyond the many spelling and punctuation errors (the author needs a serious tutorial on how to use apostrophes)and the hideous typeface are hundreds of confused descriptions and misuses of words that leave the reader not only confused, but occasionally laughing out loud. Consider the description of Hyman Altma. Having described him as a man who stood 5'8" and weighed 200 lbs, Kavieff goes on to say of this rather short man "Because of his formidable stature..." In a number of sections, the same sentence is repeated two or three times- which makes the reader wonder if even the author had given it a final reading before sending it off to his publisher.

This mess of a book has one redeeming feature- Kavieff has assembled a very complete and fascinating history of the Purple gang. That's if you can manage to read it, and at least two people I know couldn't. Caveat Emptor.

Paul R. Kavieff has done an excellent job in vividly portraying the history of this vicious Prohibition era mob and its influence on the people and the politics of Detroit in the twenties and early thirties. Despite type errors and editing problems this is the first book ever that deals with the detroit underworld and the under side of Detroit history. The author writes with a flair for putting the reader at the scene of many high profile crimes for which the Purples are so well known. It is obvious that Mr. Kavieff has a great knowledge of the Purple Gang and the Detroit underworld. This is truely one of the best organized crime histories I have ever read! Some of the criticism of this book has been totally unfair! Crime historians and other critics who have read this book for grammatical errors rather than content are missing the whole point of the work. It is obvious that the author did a great deal of original research to put this book together and I salute him as a crime historian for his wonderful effort and ability to put together a organized crime history of this scope.

As another reviewer pointed out, this is an important book because it is the only book on the Purple Gang. How this gang has escaped serious study is beyond me. Growing up in the Detroit area their name has popped up over the years many many times, as some oldtimer recollects or a house that once was a Purple Gang hideout is bulldozed, stuff like that. One time in the Detroit Public Library I went into the history room and they asked for my ID and I jokingly said, "what do you think I am in the Purple Gang or something?" The guy who asked laughed and said "funny you should say that. A writer has been trying to research the Purple Gang, and is having a hell of a time. It seems like most of the police files on them have somehow disappeared". I cannot vouch for that info, but I suppose that it was the author of this book that was doing the research and maybe that explains why there is so little info available. For that reason alone, despite the grammatical errors that others found annoying, I give it 5 stars. I found it a fascinating read.

While I have had the magnificent ability to have this man as a teacher, I found this book to be incredibly stifling. The contents often made little or no sense and had to be deciphered by the students. The book often seems loosely put together, as if there was no actual intellect used to produce it - as if the book was only published to be published and there is no other reason it should be available to the public. I do not advise anyone to read this book unless you absolutely must. This man obviously has a Napolean complex, and any further production of his books must be immediately halted.

As an instructor who has used this work for several years in various editions, I have found it to be quite solid. It provides a nice compilation of primary source materials and Rogers intros to each section are usually quite well researched and solidly presented.

It has worked quite well in my college level European history courses. I am somewhat troubled by comments appearing here questioning Rogers objectivity on, of all things, the Industrial Revolution. To compare the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe to the modern industrial development is in appropriate. Historical documentation shows quite clearly that workers at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution were treated extremely poorly. In Britain however, this treatment and the lives that evolved for working men, woman and children led to vast social and political changes in Britain.

Rogers description of the Industrial Revolution given the period he is dealing with and the documents he utilizes is completely accurate historically. The evidence can lead to no other conclusion.

As a high school teacher, I find Rodger's book a wonderful resource for helping students to see history through the eyes of the people who lived it. The books allow students to get acquainted with historical debates from which we can simulate them in the classroom. Students consistently report that they prefer the personal touch of primary sources to traditionally dry textbook accounts. After finding so much utility in them, I was somewhat surprised to see Rogers chided by so many reviewers. I noticed two dominant themes in these criticisms that warrant attention.
First, that "It's boring & confusing": This assertion reminds me of freshmen whose eyes glaze over when reading anything that contains anything with multiple syllables. Rogers' thesis is that history can only be made intelligible by studying the ideas of the people who shaped it. Those unaccustomed or disinclined from engaging with viewpoints other than their own would naturally take umbrage with his approach. Furthermore, one should not assume that one's own difficulties of understanding are necessarily symptomatic of defects on the part of the author. Serious reading takes time and patience.
Those who can discern no logic to the organization of the collection need only assemble a fuller concept of the history before attempting it. Rogers posits history as a debate between differing points of view. The outcomes of these debates become the dominant institutions and beliefs that define the events of any given period. His selections help us to see that process, from the horse's mouth as they say...
Second, that "Rogers is a Marxist": It is disheartening to see that readers lay the faults of communism on Rogers' doorstep. While certainly one is entitled to despise alternatives to capitalism, one cannot justly dispute that the activities of its opponents have done much to shape history, for good or ill. Rogers is an historian, not a politician. The beauty of Rogers' approach is that he allows his readers MAKE UP THEIR OWN MINDS by giving us competing ideas from many points of view. Of course if a free marketplace of ideas is repugnant to you, it would best to confine yourself to a diet of historical fiction, propaganda and your own writing. After all, wasn't politicizing history the worst mistake Marx ever made?

Reading Malcolmson's book is a test to anyone's patience. His general lament is that America lacks a shared history, a history that can be used to form a truly collective American identity. I do not fault him for attempting to trace our shared histories, but his book fails at this. Instead, it is a shallow attempt to reposition the white male narrative in a multicultural history that lacks a critical analysis of how concepts of "race" and inequality have collided to shape a separate America.

Any undergraduate social science or history student would be appalled at Malcolmson's treatment of race and conflict in this book. Little context or evidence is given to justify his numerous claims while concepts are not qualified at all. This is definitely not a book to use for instruction. I read this book as part of a graduate seminar at UC Berkeley and we spent most of the class time criticizing it.

Lastly, a third of the book centers on his life growing up in Oakland. Believe me, it's the most completely self-absorbed irrelevant biography I have ever seen. It reads as a weak attempt at rearticulating a "Can't we just get along" position.

Malcomson emphasizes the idea that the new USA needed a racial identity - "to the extent that Americans wanted a national identity as a people, rather than human beings that happened to be in America, that identity almost had to be racial.... 'American' identity would be a white identity."
While this is true in large part, it largely ignores the huge impact of the colonies' religious identity (which had driven the founding of several colonies) by curtly stating the unattributed fact that "in 1790 only about one in ten white American was a member of a formal church." Whatever relationship actual membership in a "formal church" may have to do with American's personal beliefs, there is ample evidence that a common core of publicly-expressed religious beliefs formed the basis of the "American" character in 1790.
Malcomson likewise downplays the cohesive unity brought about by the struggle against Britain, joint membership in a new country, and the adherence to the ideals of the Declaration. This emphasis on the preeminent racial nature of "American" identity is somewhat at odds with his other theme that "being white meant, above all, not being black."
While the book is subtitled "The American Misadventures of Race," the book could benefit from some discussion about the role of race in other civilizations and countries. What, in other countries, is similar to, or different from, the US experience?
While Malcomson does a good job in analyzing popular culture's take on race in many cases, this could improve. There's no mention of the effect of Defoe's 1719 _Robinson Crusoe_ - the first English novel, and full of the racial assumptions of the time (during 28 years on the island pondering why God abandoned him, Crusoe never considers it could be because of his involvement in the slave trade; nor does Crusoe give second thought to his assumption that Friday will be his servant after leaving the island). D.W. Griffith's 1915 "Birth of a Nation" is barely mentioned.
Malcomson's attitude toward religion is inconsistent. At one point, he tries to argue that religion did not support slavery, writing that pro-slavery advocates "desperately ransacked the Bible to find comfort for slaveholders ... [with] harried thumbings of the Bible." Yet it isn't too hard to find the Bible's tacit approval of slavery, its general comments on separation of peoples, and even direct commands such as "Slaves, be obedient to those who are your earthly masters." Nor does Malcomson mention the approval that many churches gave to slavery, and the typical segregation practiced by churches, which certainly lent legitimacy to feelings of white superiority. Billy Graham astonished some church members when he refused to allow segregated seating in his crusades after 1954: in some areas, formalized church segregation continued through the 1960's.
Yet, ignoring the church's segregation through the 1960's, Malcomson suddenly decides the church is segregated in the 1970's. He writes, "When, as a teenager, I left Oakland, I also left the church.... I could not choose to be in a white church. That would be like choosing a white school (or a white town).... [In the black church,] the music is undeniably better, there's more to eat at socials, and grief is not treated as a ... character flaw. Where the white church is a lake, the black church is an ocean."
First, where is the discussion about _why_ some churches are "white" ?? There are many reasons besides intended segregation that a church may wind up to be predominately white. Second, what right does Malcomson have to generalize from his own experience to the idea that the "black" church is everywhere superior to the "white" church?
Why does Malcomson think that "when I was a teenager" is a date every reader should recognize? (By reading other passages, Malcomson was apparently a teenager in the 1970's.) In another passage, Malcomson strangely dates an event by the year when "Grandma was closing in on death."
Malcomson frequently picks on the negative: he spends seven pages describing the 1849 California constitutional convention debates on whether to admit free blacks to California, yet he does not give the end vote and its margin, nor any relevant language of the California constitution.
The book, published in 2000, essentially ends its narration of American racial history in the mid 1970's, with the observation that whites then tried to move away from their racial past, as other races moved toward theirs.
One major current issue on race in America is "reverse discrimination." Malcomson doesn't even mention cases such as Baake. Is it right for blacks to receive benefits based on race? Malcomson's only comment, somewhat on point, is that "races in America have functioned so much as families do, and once you are in the family you receive your part of the inheritance, and the American past becomes your past."
Earlier Malcomson discusses the attempt of abolitionists in the 1840's to keep blacks from forming black groups or holding black conventions, on the principle of equality. "The beyond-race principle lacked a historical element. Perhaps that is in the nature of a principle. But in the case of race in America, it could have strange consequences, because race, being itself historical, resists ahistorical explanation."
Where are the author's thoughts on the solution to our racial problems? How long must the correction of our "family" problem continue? One would hope that someone who had done so much research would have some thoughts, but they're not presented.
This is a worthwhile book to read, because it will make you think. Yet it has a lot of gaps in it, is overly long in many sections, and its stream-of-consciousness organization (as Salon states) is "unorthodox if not downright infuriating."

Malcomson provides a wealth of historical, detailed proof of the European, Renaissance-period origins of "race." Additionally, from a uniquely American perspective, he shows how destructive this concept has been for both "white" people and "non-white" peoples, alike. This book is necessarily somewhat dry, because the concept of race lies so deep within our sub-conscious thinking that cursory analyses and descriptions would come off as either mythological or hysterical -- and therefore would convince no one of their truth.

This book is used as a MEH textbook for sophomores in my highschool. My friends and i found this book to be very dull and boring. It contains a lot of information but the way it is presented is not in an interesting manner, rather in a dull way. This book has no bold words which makes it difficult for us to read. I believe it was chapter 17 or 18 that the beginning was very interesting but suddenly it became boring. I think history is interesting but the way that this book teaches it to you is very uninteresting. I don't suggest this book for any highschool student. Everyday when we get our history assignment i dread to read this book because it is so boring.

I enjoyed this text during my history class very much because it was so in depth. The hundreds of famous paintings alone make this book worthwhile, but it reads very much like a college text. Don't get me wrong -- I came to love history through taking this class, and the book was a large part of that. You must have a high level of literacy and some previous knowledge of history to read this book very easily. NO DETAILS ARE LEFT OUT!!! The book is fabulous and I would recommend it to any level anyways.

The book had lots of info and was easy to understand. It covered all of the most important aspects of western civilizations. Anyone who complains that it was hard to read is an ... I would consider myself smart but i am by no means a rocket scientist and i found this book easy to read and enjoyable. It provided lots of information about certain interesting aspects of different civilizations cultures that would appeal to anyone who whould sign up for a history course.

The Lost Tribe is an account of a journalists short (2 week) trip into one of Papua New Guinea's more remote areas. The book is descriptively well written, but is also full of inaccuracies caused by the authors lack of knowlege of local languages and of modern Papua New Guinea. The people he descibes may well be highly isolated but as with most of PNG, their names are included in the common role. Had he given imself more time he could have obatined proper maps which reveal the location of the village and the fictitious volcano he descibes. He could also have learnt Pidgin properly which would have been useful in getting himeself out of the situation that arose. What the author doesn't know is that after his departure from Wanakepa those villagers were forced to pay huge compensation for what happened. They would like the author to bare some of the cost. I'm sure this could be arranged through MAF whoom he can contact through the internet.

This was an author I had hoped would deliver something that many travel-writers don't - a sense of the freedom and anguish of the way we once lived, portrayed through the experiences of the living. In review, he largely managed this. But I still felt strangely unsatisfied when finishing the book. A feeling that emerges from the fact that you leave the story without actually knowing all that much about the tribe. You see, in truth this book is more about a series of events along a storyline than an expose of a 'lost' tribe. Of course this has much to do with his difficulties in communicating with the tribe, but nevertheless it is a shame.

I did though feel that this story highlights the gulf still existing in the world across the spectrum of human cultures. It is for the reader to decide (or not) the value in maintaining or trying to close such a gulf, and for whose benefit - ours or theirs. For example, the impact of western religion on such tribes is shown in the book to be thoughtless and combattant in the way it is taught. Perhaps to be expected in the 18th or 19th century, but quite disturbing when it is in the present day.

In conclusion, I think Marriot has done the Liawep justice with this story, but the damage he did during the course of his stay will probably haunt him and the Liawep for many years to come.

It is not often that one finds travel writing elevated to the level of adventure. What's more, Marriott's prose is clear and sincere. Overall, a great read. If you have not got your hand on a good travel book in a while, invest in this one. I'm going out to get the "Savage shore".

Maybe you've seen it in the bookstores: a coffee-table sized book, almost 600 pages long, with an accompanying CD-ROM of speeches and other recordings. A great gift for an American history buff? Don't be fooled. I found it at the library and it turned out to be a huge disappointment. It has little to say and almost no visual impact compared to a book like "The American Century." Obviously at this point in time, Stephen Ambrose is coasting on his reputation.

This is not a book to read cover to cover, rather I found it entertaining to pick a section almost at random. Read about log cabin construction on the Ohio frontier. Or Grant's own recollection of Lee's surrender. Or of T Roosevelt's family horse play (literally) in the White House. For those of us who do not get a chance to view original material, this book is fun.

This book is great for history and social studies teachers. The book is broken into small snipets of history that are the perfect length for one lesson. In a time when textbooks give only partial views on history slanted towards the views of the editors and publishers of the textbook, this is a refeshing use of primary source material. Ambrose and Brinkley let historic figures speak for themselves.

I am a hich school junior and use the unabridged version of this textbook in my A.P. U.S. History class. Since my school's Advanced Placement courses use college texts, I assume America Past and Present is also used in undergraduate history classes. (I had to rate this book to post this "review." Please do not consider my rating if you are trying to assess this book.)

The authors do an excellent job of covering American history. Highly readable, comprehensible, with interesting special essays in each chapter. My only complaint is a lack of study aids or chapter summaries. Also available in two briefer editions, covering American history through 1865 in the first and after 1865 in the second.

This makes an excellent undergraduate textbook in US history -- also good just for a general read.