Magyar

Not much history

Revisado: 09-08-23

Reading this book is like watching a Lifetime movie, a lot of focus on how the characters felt and acted, but very little historical content or context.

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Excellant Account

Revisado: 07-01-21

Based on the tape transcripts, this book is by far the best on Watergate, Organizing the text around the daily recorded transcripts, the account has a dramatic structure that is compelling. Although the author helpfully provides sections that give context, the main focus is on the actual words of Nixon and those others involved in the coverup. Also provided are snippets of the actual conversations. While sometimes these break the flow of the narrative, they nonetheless gives the reader a sense of the people, their tone, their emotions and their character. Unfortunately the book ends in the summer of 1973 when the taping system was removed. It would have been great to ahem this continue to the resignation of Nixon.

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Excellent text and superb reading.

Revisado: 05-22-20

I know there are more serious academic texts out there on this topic, but this is an overall excellent treatment. It really changed how I think about things Also the reading is storytelling at its best.

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So so Story. Irritating performance

Revisado: 05-22-20

The text is so so. But what turned me away was the narrator. He reads a sentence, stops, takes a breath and then reads the next one. After 3o minutes I couldn't take it anymore

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Good HISTORY AWFUL READING

Revisado: 02-05-20

This is a book I would love, but the narrator of this book ruined it for me. His voice was stultifying, like sitting in class and listening to a bad lecturer

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GOOD HISTORY AWFUL READING

Revisado: 07-18-19

I finished Kershaw's other book, The Global Age, and found it to be fascinating. I then started this book and quickly stopped. The reading was awful-so overly theatrical that it quickly became both irritating and tedious.

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Fascinating

Revisado: 09-07-18

This is a fascinating book that brings together a lot of research and perspectives on the period 1450-1650. A times some of the sections are something of a "Pump and dump" meaning that because there was research on a topic it had to be included.I wanted to know more about Scandinavia. But still I found it a very insight book.

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Superficial content, "Gee wiz" presentation

Revisado: 09-07-18

Like the other Issacson biographies, this is a superficial account of an important figure in our world. I though that because Jobs was more contemporary (not Einstein, Franklin, or Michelangelo) this would be different. But it isn't. Very little discussion of context, the broader picture, other kinds of factors that were important.This is a highly journalistic picture, not even like the New York Times but more like People magazine. In addition to this, the narrator accentuates the superficiality with a very "gee whizz" kind of tone and presentation

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THIS IS WHAT HISTORY IS ABOUT!

Revisado: 07-06-18

I love the Oxford series and have been rarely disappointed. White's study of the period of 1865-1896 is a deep insightful work that artfully balances the tension between "what really happened" and "presentism". Granted, this is a huge era to cover and it is left to the historian as artist to decide on what aspects, personages and themes to highlight and which ones would remain in the shadows. I have read many accounts of the Gilded Age and this one adds a whole new dimension of my understanding. I particularly like his using "the home" and "contract labor" as organizing themes from which to structure the more detailed accounts.

In a study that attempts to cover such a large topic, it is understandable that some things would be minimized or left out. Aside from Grant's desire to annex Santo Domingo, there is little attention to foreign policy. He emphasized at the end that the United States then was (and is) part of a global system, but little discussion of how trade and political relations with the European powers created a context for the changes of the period.
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One could criticize him for trying to make this era very relevant to our current times. The discussion of the Supreme Court at the end can be read (and may have been written) with the current situation in mind. (July 2018). I don't see that necessarily as a fault as he does it with the skillfulness of a mature historical scholar. Perhaps 50-100 years from now, this book will be read as an "interpretation " (re: Macaulay's The History of England),but that is what keeps the field of history alive.

Regarding the reading, at first I found it a little bit too fast. I could see that for those who are unfamiliar with the people and events of this period, such a reading could be off putting. I slowed the reading speed to .75 and listened to that for a while. However I eventually found that too slow and went back to the original speed. I got used to it. After all this is a long book (almost 35 hours).

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