James T. Patterson
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By: Oxford University Press, USA
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Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> 20th Century -> 1945 - Present
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> 20th Century -> General
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18
Average rating: 4.0 of 5
Interesting, readable, and careless 4 out of 5 stars.
18 of 23 people found this review helpful.
I read Patterson's book in order to improve my general understanding of the period (1945 - 1974) that he describes. Even though I had lived through those years, I realized that my knowledge and understanding of what happened then were somewhat cursory at best. I finished the book somewhat disapppointed. For one thing, even though my knowledge of the era was limited, I easily noticed a number of surprising errors. In one egregious example, Patterson devotes a page (p. 276) to describe how `On March 1, 1954, the United States tested the world's first hydrogen bomb..'. He goes on to tell us how fallout from this test sickened crewmen on a Japanese fishing boat, and led to a public outcry. However, as he could have learned from an ordinary World Almanac, the United States tested the first hydrogen bomb in 1952, not 1954. The test he describes is actually the notorious Castle Bravo test, which did in fact occur on March 1, 1954. (The use of lithium deuteride fuel in this test led to an unpredicted secondary reaction, which in turn led the bomb to yield 15 megatons rather than the expected 6, thus endangering the Japanese fishermen, etc.)
At another point (p. 669) he preposterously tells us that the phrase `acid test' dates from the mid 1960's and stems from the use of LSD during that time. He would have been well-advised to consult an ordinary dictionary before making this claim - unless, in fact, it is merely a very subtle joke on the reader.
I also noticed his somewhat uncritical description of an April, 1972 bombing attack as `killing an estimated 100,000 North Vietnamese troops' (p. 758). One can only speculate on how many NVA soldiers Patterson thought were wounded in this attack, which must have marked a turning point in the history of warfare.
What I found especially unsettling about this sort of thing was Patterson's claim (p. xii) - a claim I have no reason to doubt - that a number of eminent historians `read every word' of his manuscript. One wonders - didn't any of these historians remember hearing people say `acid test' before the age of LSD? (Subsequently, after whatever fact-checking the publisher found appropriate, the book appeared as Volume X in the Oxford History of the United States, and went on to win the 1997 Bancroft Prize in History.)
So why, given its obvious unreliability with respect to facts, have I given this book four stars instead of one or two. In the first case, I make allowances for the sprawling unmanageability of the period, and of recent times in general. In the second case, the writing is reasonably balanced and judicious - though Patterson seems to be a liberal, he is neither hysterical nor shrilly self-righteous. Thirdly, the author has made a valiant effort to include and integrate coverage of foreign and domestic politics, the economy, social trends, popular and high culture, and so on. Finally, the book is very readable, though not nearly up to the literary level of its predecessor volume in the series, David Kennedy's distinguished Freedom From Fear: The American people in Depression and War, 1929-1945.
Editorial Review:
Part of the multivolume Oxford History of the United States, Grand Expectations spotlights the United States at the center of the international stage during the post World War II years. The book opens on country very different from the U.S. of today--racial segregation was law and more than half the nation's farm dwellings had no electricity. With England, Germany, and Japan ravaged by war, the U.S. entered a period of prosperity that soared to unimaginable heights in the 1960s. Though Patterson ends his book with the downfall of Nixon and the beginnings of a troubled economy, he concludes that the U.S. in 1974, "remained one of the most stable societies in the world."
