The Shortest History of the United States
I’ve been watching a lot of short videos online recently. The ones showing how a location has changed over the centuries. Manhattan Island and Chicago, for instance, starting as bucolic scenes of nature before transforming into the massive cities they are today. Mud huts to wooden houses to brick structures and finally skyscrapers. (One that haunts me is a time-lapse image of the Earth over the next several million years, moving at something like a million years second. Puts an unsettling perspective on our minute lifespans.) Anyway, reading this book is a little like watching these videos. The first settlers crossing the land bridge from Alaska, 20,000 years before Columbus. Then Columbus himself; the Spanish and French and English colonies; 1620 and the Mayflower; the break with England and the Declaration of Independence; Thomas Jefferson, the 1803 Louisiana Purchase and Lewis and Clark…. On and on it rolls, never stopping too long in any year or decade, but always finding time...
