Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story
Original price was: $64.99.$35.99Current price is: $35.99.
A wonderfully written, sweeping narrative history of the United States that will help Americans discover the land they call home.
High School and College Age Students
The Original Land of Hope Narrative in Hardback Edition
We have a glut of text and trade books on American history. But what we don’t have is a compact, inexpensive, authoritative, and compulsively readable book that will offer to intelligent young Americans a coherent, persuasive, and inspiring narrative of their own country. Such an account will shape and deepen their sense of the land they inhabit, and by making them understand that land’s roots, will equip them for the privileges and responsibilities of citizenship in American society, and provide them with a vivid and enduring sense of membership in one of the greatest enterprises in human history: the exciting, perilous, and immensely consequential story of their own country.
The existing texts simply fail to tell that story with energy and conviction. They are more likely to reflect the skeptical outlook of specialized professional academic historians, an outlook that supports a fragmented and fractured view of modern American society, and that fails to convey to young people the greater arc of that history. Or they reflect the outlook of radical critics of American society, who seek to debunk the standard American narrative, and has an enormous, and largely negative, effect upon the teaching of American history in American high schools and colleges.
This state of affairs cannot continue for long without producing serious consequences. A great nation needs and deserves a great and coherent narrative, as an expression of its own self-understanding: and it needs to convey that narrative to its young effectively. It perhaps goes without saying that such a narrative cannot be a fairy tale or a whitewash of the past; it will not be convincing if it is not truthful. But there is no necessary contradiction between an honest account and an inspiring one. This account seeks to provide both.
Publisher : Encounter Books (May 21, 2019)
Language : English
Hardcover : 504 pages
ISBN-10 : 1594039372
ISBN-13 : 978-1594039379
Reading age : 15 years and up
Grade level : 9 and up
Item Weight : 3.3 pounds
Dimensions : 7.75 x 1.25 x 10.5 inches
9 reviews for Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story
Add a review
Related Products
Original price was: $64.99.$35.99Current price is: $35.99.
Mark H –
American history at its best
This is a great book! An encouraging and well written overview of the great American story, without ignoring any of the pain points in our history. A must read!
BarbieJ –
Best Historical Narrative of America’s History
I’d you’re a history buff, this is for you. In my humble opinion, this is the best, most concise book regarding our American heritage. The content is incredibly well articulated. It very well-written. Full of facts and lots of details, yet it’s a fun and easy read. Highly recommend!
Deb Bennett –
Finally a centrist US History book that strikes the perfect balance.
This is a very well written book, composed in a flowing narrative style that reads more like a novel than a textbook. It neither whitewashes nor over-glorifies our past, and instead presents a thrilling overview of events and the human factors that drove them. Readers come away understanding the “why” behind crucial points in our history, placed in the proper context of the times. It dispenses handily most of the contemporary revisionist trends while successfully dealing with the darker moments of our past. As such, it avoids both the sentimental mythology of 1950’s US history texts as well as the revolutionary propaganda of Howard Zinn.This book leaves the reader appreciating both moments of pride and of regret in our national story, teaching why we should both love our country and work to improve and modernize it. A solidly centrist text, It should be required reading for US high school students.History books like this require word of mouth to gain an audience. The author’s refusal to embrace contemporary revisionist trends means it will not likely be well received by the heavily politicized institutions of public education.Get the word out and buy this book for your friends!!
Pauly D. –
Incredibly engaging account of US History
Saw this book at a friends house. I found reading the intro and Chapters 1 and 2 so enjoyable that I decided to buy the book. I am glad I did. The book is compact – under 430 pages – and is written in an engaging manner. It is not rich in details like a dense high school text (boring), but it is not meant to be a complete, definitive telling of our story. After all, that would require an additional 500 pages at least. What McClay presents here is an honest, accurate, balanced account of the “great American story”. This would be an excellent US history book for the student in grades 8- 12. I believe this is one of those history books that will intrigue the student into reading other more detailed writings. I will test my belief next year when my oldest turns 13. If you are not sure about buying the book, read the book’s introduction pages XI – XIV. As far as I’m concerned, McClay succeeds in accomplishing his objectives and the book is well worth the price.
PCA –
Balanced, readable, thorough and thought-provoking…did not want to put it down!
I echo the sentiments of prior “5-star” reviewers. McClay does an outstanding job of capturing all that is good and right about America without ignoring its warts – and placing them all in perspective. It was hard to find anything significant that he left out over the 240 years since our Nation’s founding, and he placed all that happened in that time in great context. Eminently readable, it was hard to put down and I couldn’t wait to get back to it. Humble and articulate, McClay dealt with sensitive and complicated historical issues in a down-to-earth and plain-spoken way – he is anything but pedantic. As an amateur student of history, this is the first grand narrative that I’ve read since my school days. It is a momentous effort that can be read by mature adults, young adults and teens to help understand how today’s America came to be. I especially appreciate his sentiment of America as a “Land of Hope.” It is an apt expression for the “Idea of America.” In particular, I appreciate the bibliography he included with the book. It will serve as a fertile source for my future reading list. Well done!
Kathleen V. –
Work book for learning TRUTHFUL history
Nice book to assist the high school student in learning correct history.
S. Johnson –
A nice balance
I grew up at a time where history was taught such that all the founding fathers were heroic men of virtue; All their warts and blemishes were airbrushed from the texts. The message was clear–we should be proud of our American history and we should be proud to be Americans. Now it seems the tide has radically turned such that history is written in terms of just warts and blemishes, such that we should be embarrassed (ashamed?) about our American history and embarrassed to be Americans. In this book however, the proper balance is found; the shapers of early American history are neither painted as perfect pillars of virtue, but nor are they painted as immoral colonizing, land grabbing, slave owning scoundrels. History is more nuanced than that and as the author points out must be viewed through the lens of the time of the events, not the lens of our own time. This book portrays historical figures as flawed, but yet these flaws did not obviate their great achievements; This is not a strictly binary either or world we live in, where there is only all good or only all bad, full stop. All men are flawed, but it is not rational to then conclude, that only flawed bad results can come from flawed men as seems to be the popular notion today. What is unfortunate (based on the paucity of reviews here) is that this book will probably not find its way into the hands of the many people who should read it. What is even more unfortunate, is that it will never find its way into the classrooms where history is being (mis)taught today by ideologues rather than historians.
Patricia Levasseur –
Everything I need to know about the US founding.
This book is a great read and takes me by the hand to teach me about our great country from its founding.
Nam –
A book that is really worth having.Thanks Dr. Wilfred!