Saturday, November 20, 2010

The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on Five Hundred Years of History, Volume 1: Atlantic America, 1492-1800

This volume presents a geographical history of the areas of the North American continent that are currently part of the United States or are relevant to the way the US turned out the way it did. The book focuses pretty clearly on the US: while it does a great job attending to the many European and African peoples who settled the early US, and differentiating among the Native Americans already here, it has less interest in the rest of the hemisphere (which is not to say that Mexico, Canada, Brazil, and the Caribbean never appear, so much as they aren't the main focus). While this book would not give an adequate history if you were looking for great men or politics, I found it to be an excellent and thorough approach. I'm looking forward to the other volumes, which will take the US through 2000.

No comments: