America's Hidden History: Book Review
Author Kenneth C. Davis details untold tales of a nation's birth
Davis explores early America from the first bloody, disease-ridden conquests by the Spanish to the harsh realities of living in seventeenth century America. This book is not light reading: Each tale is presented in emotional, gory detail and gives the reader a sense reason and purpose for each person's actions.
The author of the Don't Know Much series uses this book to focus on people rarely seen by the casual history student. His fighting women include Hannah Emerson Dustin, who was hailed as a heroine in her time for escaping her Indian captors --- by scalping them.
Among his forgotten founders is James Wilson, who was one of the most influential of the Founding Fathers in terms of creating the Constitution, but whose contemporaries knew him as someone who was placed in debtor's prison--while still serving on the Supreme Court.
Weaving History Into Each Forgotten Story
The narrative within each chapter is not told according to the timeline, and the reader may have trouble keeping up with which year any given paragraph set in. There is a reason Davis uses his approach, though. He weaves the story together to show the personality of each new character and understand how a new name adds to the color of the event itself. This explains how a general's personality can change the course of a battle, or how a gathering may have ended in bloodshed if it hadn't ended early (due to an audience comment being mistaken for a cry of "fire").
Each moment is examined for its context and its people, not only telling the reader what emotions and thoughts were running through a person, but why they were feeling and thinking they way they were.
And each historical event has consequences further than it's own life, as Davis shows. Each chapter concludes with an Aftermath section, that explains how events that followed after were effected by each story.
Reasons to Read America's Hidden History
Full of research and humor, America's Hidden History doesn't let either get in the way of the story. Davis lets the narrative go where it needs to and shows the reader what it was like to live in the times of the conquistadors, the pilgrims, and the revolutionaries. He explains what it was like for Benedict Arnold to be considered a great leader, and yet have a personality that gained him enemies, and why there is a statue honoring Arnold in New York which doesn't bear his name
This book is for anyone who wants to dive into the minds and culture of those that shaped early America.
America's Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation, HarperCollins (April 29, 2008) (ISBN 978-0-06-111818-0)
