d the Civil War.
The book concentrates on American history up to the twentieth century. These writings have û until the publication of this book last year û been found only within Churchill's much longer four-volume A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1953. The chapters on America from that larger work have been excised and then worked seamlessly knit together into a whole.
To this synthetic vision of American history of his uncleÆs, Winston S. Churchill has added essays and speeches of his grandfather's, many never before published in book form, to bring the book up to the mid-twentieth century. Rather than seeming grafted on or irrelevant to the main points of ChurchillÆs original narrative, they seem to be natural outgrowths of it. For not only are they in the main part in the former prime ministerÆs own words but they continue his original intent, which was to give as complete a possible a picture of American history. And Churchill understood what so many full-time historians do not, which is that history does not with the past, but with today, and even tomorrow.
The first half of the volume offers an old-fashioned narrative history of America's political development, from the age of exploration to the 1880s. While these chapters are beautifully written and informative, even for someone with a passing knowledge of U.S. history, the second half of the book is actually the more interesting in how it gathers information usually only available from scattered sources and û even more importantly û underscores how smoothly ChurchillÆs analysis of the countryÆs beginnings help explain its actions and culture in the 20th century.
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