“Remember the Alamo?” by Alison Rattle and Allison Vale

Here’s a little book I picked up a while back and have been reading very slowly ever since. When I first saw it at Books-A-Million, I thought reading "American History in Bite-Sized Chunks" sounded like a worthy use of my time. My grasp of history has always been abysmal; maybe I would finally learn something! And when I was flipping through the book and came to the list of US presidents on page xix-xx, my decision was made immediately. The list ended more than ten years ago. I had to have this book. 

So, yeah, I bought this book because it was out of date. Which makes it perverse of me to complain about the weirdly abrupt ending, with Watergate in 1974. That seems an odd year to halt a book on American history that was first published in 2009. Had nothing historically important happened in the intervening years? I mean 9/11 is a huge one. Even Reaganomics and the War on Drugs would seem to merit a mention.

Overall, did this book do what I wanted it to do? Well, if I had any kind of memory it would have. It seems like a pretty comprehensive (at least up until 1974), if not in-depth, overview of our nation’s history. But I don’t feel like I retained any of it. It’s like when I read it, it’s all totally familiar—there wasn’t much in here that I hadn’t at least heard of before. But as soon as I read it, it was gone out of my head again. I’m thinking about re-reading the book. (You might say I’m doomed to repeat it.) But just exactly how many times will I have to go through this?