![]() ![]() On the other hand, anyone who has wondered whether the history of the United States can be forced into a Thatcherite mould may well find the book of interest. No one seeking a fair-minded account of the American past will find it here. Those he dislikes, on the other hand, are little more than caricatures: Thomas Paine, for example, was ‘a man with a grudge against society, a spectacular grumbler’. An excellent storyteller, he describes very well those figures from the past whom he admires, from George Washington to Ronald Reagan. What this means is that his approach to history is polemical, one-sided and prone to gross oversimplifications. Johnson proudly asserts that he makes no effort to ‘conceal’ his ‘opinions’. For better or worse, A History of the American People is vintage Johnson. No one who knows his earlier writings is likely to be surprised by its strengths and weaknesses. Johnson’s latest book opens with the claim that it ‘has new and often trenchant things to say about every aspect and period of America’s past’. If succinctness is not his forte, neither is modesty. In the past twenty years, the former editor of the New Statesman turned ardent Thatcherite has produced, among other books, The Birth of the Modern (weighing in at more than a thousand pages), Modern Times, a massive chronicle of the 20th century, and lengthy histories of Christianity and Judaism. ![]() Paul Johnson is one of the most indefatigable writers on either side of the Atlantic. ![]()
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