This copy I purchased was a withdrawn copy from a local middle school library. The cover and pages were pristine and now I know why. This is the most turgid rendering of American colonial history Ive read in years. It is truly sad.
I wanted to use the knowledge gleaned from this thin volume to flesh-out the genealogy of some of my ancestors; genealogy with just a catalog of dates is of limited value, in my estimation. I wanted to make my ancestors (who came before the American Revolution) come alive in the book Im writing.
It took more than six weeks of agonized reading to get through this (less than 100 page) tome. The saving grace could have been the illustrations. The images were good by-and-of-themselves, but there were surely better choices. For example: Who really needs to see (yet again) the illustration of Benjamin Franklin doing his experiment with electricity using a key and kite during an electrical storm?
At the end, I walked away with maybe 5 interesting facts that I can use for my genealogy story of colonial America.
I wanted to use the knowledge gleaned from this thin volume to flesh-out the genealogy of some of my ancestors; genealogy with just a catalog of dates is of limited value, in my estimation. I wanted to make my ancestors (who came before the American Revolution) come alive in the book Im writing.
It took more than six weeks of agonized reading to get through this (less than 100 page) tome. The saving grace could have been the illustrations. The images were good by-and-of-themselves, but there were surely better choices. For example: Who really needs to see (yet again) the illustration of Benjamin Franklin doing his experiment with electricity using a key and kite during an electrical storm?
At the end, I walked away with maybe 5 interesting facts that I can use for my genealogy story of colonial America.
