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Originally Posted by greatwhitenorthchick
Now that I'm becoming a citizen, I have decided to make an effort to learn about this country's history -- I'm kind of shocked at my ignorance - I had always thought that I kind of knew everything because of being raised on US network TV. Anyway, I have now watched Ken Burns' The Dust Bowl and am in the middle of The Civil War. I also watched America: The Story of Us, which was a little too rah rah, but (a) I found out that Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone were in fact real people (who knew) and (b) I think I did actually become a more optimistic person, so kudos to rah rah documentaries.
I am looking for suggestions for more documentaries, perhaps about the Revolution and the Civil Rights movement -- or if there are any good books that are not historical fiction. If anyone has any suggestions, they would be most appreciated.
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One of my favorite US historians is John Mack Farragher. He focuses mostly on the wild west, but he has a wonderful book (A Great and Noble Scheme) that focuses on a bit of interplay of Canadian and American history in the expulsion and resettlement of the Acadians. Schlesinger's Age of Jackson is I think a really pivotal book that helps sort out the days of the early republic and the pre-Civil War period, and it reads pretty well. Saul Cornell's The Other Founders gives a really good idea about the anti-federalists from the revolution onward. William Cooper's Town is a pretty cool book about upstate New York in the early republic. I'll think of a few other ideas, but those are all books that I think focus on limited subjects in American History but really end up going way beyond them to give a good sense of the growth of the Republic.
