Sunday, June 29, 2008

...Doomed to Repeat It?

Well, I just finished watching the John Adams miniseries done by HBO and I am happy to report that it is not the waste of $60 that I had been fearing it might be.

However, it does bring up certain gaps in my memory of my history classes. As one "for instance", I remember that we covered a piece of legislation called the Alien and Sedition Act but I could not have said when it was ratified, under which president, nor what it did. This is not the first time that my poor memory has left me knowing that I should know something about something that happened in relatively recent history but unable to recall specifics. I find this to be distressing and I wish to remedy my faulty memory (as best as possible, anyway. I need to find some way to transpose history into mathematical equations. I might be able to remember some of this stuff then).

With this in mind, can someone out there point me in the direction of a relatively unbiased book on American History? I'm looking for more along the lines of statements of facts (i.e. who, where, when, and how) more than editorializing (i.e. why). I'd much appreciate it.

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