A History of US: Book 10: All The People 1945-2001 Teaching Guide (History of Us, 10)

User Review: - Excellent History Resource
A History of US: All the People is an excellent history resource. As a homeschooling mom of a seventh grader, I've gathered a variety of sources to teach history and this is one of the best. It demonstrates its points with primary sources and describes events and people in memorable, interesting ways. I highly recommend this resource for those interested in and/or those teaching history.

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User Review: - Neat style of writing Interesting reading
This entire series of books is wonderful. The author's style of writing is almost whimsical and makes reading about American history so interesting, you don't want to put the book down. The best books on American history I've seen yet!

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User Review: - Joy Hakim brings the History of US up to date
Joy Hakim completes her juvenile American history series A History of US by looking at over a half-century's worth of events from the end of the World War II to the aftermath of September 11th. The title of this particular volume, "All the People 1945-2001" underscores her guiding question: "Does our land of promise, at last, have the will to become a nation for ALL the people?" Instead of dealing with this period as the "post-war" era Hakim sees it as featuring battles of another kind, from Cold War combat in foreign lands to the struggle for equality at home, and including now the threat of terrorism on American soil. By looking at the Supreme Court decision outlawing school segregation, American youth in the streets protesting the war in Vietnam, and the campaign for equal rights for women, Hakim clearly sees the U.S. beginning to become in practice what it had always claimed to be in theory, a nation for all of its people.

The complex tapestry of American history has never seemed clearer than in this particular volume. For all of the rest I have been able to find a sense of narrative structure, but it is hard to find a clear sense of division amongst the chapters of "All the People" by the end of the volume. After a preface covering the struggles of democracies and a look at the lives of the accidental president Harry Truman and Jackie Robinson, who broke the color line in baseball, there is an initial unit (Chapters 11) looking primarily at the Cold War but also touching on the Marshall Plan, Joseph McCarthy, Ike, and mass consumerism. The second unit (Chapters 12-26) focuses primarily on the Civil Rights struggle, but also the presidencies of Kennedy and Johnson. But once we get to the Vietnam War the mixture becomes a whole lot cloudier. The third unit could simply end with the double impact of Vietnam and Watergate (Chapters 27-36), which leaves the post-Nixon presidents from Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton (Chapters 37-45) along with the significant events of the 21st century and Hakim's epilogue (Chapters 46-52), which reinforces her firm conviction that knowing about American history is the most important civics lesson of a young student's life.

Part of the problem, if that is how you choose to see it, is that current events constantly get in the way of the historian's perspective. I have always thought of Richard Nixon as being the most important president of my life because of not only Watergate, which has colored all domestic politics since it forced Nixon out of office, but also because of Vietnam and d?tente (only Nixon could go to China). But when we get another couple of generations down the road and historians look back at the last half of the 20th century (with September 11th now being recognized as the start of a new era that will get its volume), who will they decide was the most important politicians after Nixon? Ronald Reagan was the most popular but will history judge him as having a bigger impact than Bill Clinton? Or did Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan (profiled on page 231) have the biggest impact of anyone on the lives of the American people in this period?

The fact that history continues to unfold faster than she can put together the next edition of A History of US (as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have more than amply evidenced) does not dissuade Hakim from arguing that she sees pattern and meaning in the nation's recent history. Hakim uses the events of September 11, 2001 to consider how many aspects of the terrorist attacks have brought the qualities that keep American strong to the forefront (e.g., representative democracy, freedom of speech, religious tolerance). As always, this serves to underscore the way in which Hakim is not merely writing about American history, she is teaching it. All of the volumes in this series have parenthetical comments and questions Hakim includes to involve her young readers in learning about their nation's history.

Hakim makes reading about American history a personal experience. For example, while telling all about the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education case, Hakim has a sidebar that tells about the integration of a Southern school as related by two students, one black and one white, who lived through the times. The margins of these books are filled with not only interesting facts but address obvious questions that young students would ask their students. The main reason that this series is such a hit with parents home schooling their children is that Hakim's presence as a teacher is clearly felt throughout every volume in this series. Her readers might be paying attention to all of the period illustrations that are crammed into these books, but virtually every one of those illustrations and its caption is making a point. Hopefully this will allow young students to realize what some of us have known for years: that learning American history can be fun (as well as important).

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User Review: - More opinion than fact...
I had used some of the earlier books in this series to teach my children and had enjoyed them. In this last book, however, the author is writing about history that many of us have actually lived through. I was disappointed and surprised to find that her writing was so biased and opinionated. I really wish she had just stuck to the facts. Although she is entitled to her opinion, and these opinions gave us a lot to talk about, because of her own bias she emphasized certain issues and people, while barely mentioning others. Towards the end of the book I found that she had some of her facts simply outright wrong, and this was disheartening as it cast a shadow on all the information reported in her other books. I found it very surprising that a history book for children would have errors in the facts, and that it would be used to so shamelessly support someone's personal political agenda. Again, there is no reason why someone can't write and publish a book like this, but it should not be presented as an unbiased children's "history" book, because this book is certainly not that. I was quite disappointed.

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User Review: - Buyer Beware.
I doubt there's any US History textbooks more excitingly written for kids age 9-12 than Joy Hakim's. (This series is the one used in one of the best private schools in Silicon Valley.) They're glossy and beautiful, and well-nigh irresistible. What an incredible shame. What's the problem? The problem is they contain a version of history so slanted as to amount to an utterly shameless propagandizing of children. I'm a liberal atheist, but, really, these books should be sealed into a time capsule, to entertain future historians.
I assume Hakim simply doesn't know any better, but even a Marxist with a PhD in American History would blush a little to discover that a child reading this series would never suspect that close to 100 million innocent men, women, and children died under the yoke of socialist regimes, nor that a third of the world was plunged into an unnecessary grinding poverty for decades. On the other hand, they will learn, as they should, that National Socialism murdered six million innocents, and that the Ku Klux Klan `grew hugely' in the 1920s. But they won't learn that any other serious totalitarian movements also grew hugely in the 1920s, or that five million innocents died under the rule of Lenin's first experiment in socialism in the 1920s.

On the contrary, all anti-Communism in the twentieth century is presented as nothing better than a witch-hunt. Indeed, anti-communism is literally referred to as a `witch-hunt,' several times. Come on. So, was the fight against Hitler's National Socialism a `witch-hunt'? Why such a palpable double standard for twin evils? Hakim teaches children that while National Socialism was indeed a real and present danger, and even worth waging an unprecedented World War to fight it, on the other hand, international socialism, or Communism, was, as she tells it, never any real danger to Americans.

For instance, there's a chapter on the HUAC hearings in which McCarthy is referred to as a 'liar' about a half a dozen times. The chapter literally begins with the opening sentence "Joe McCarthy was a liar." Sure, he's controversial, but the latest research by historians just doesn't back up Hakim's wild-eyed account of liberal anti-socialism in America as nothing better than a nefarious `witch-hunt' conducted by `liars' and oppressors. Totalitarian Communist Lillian Hellman is profiled as a hero, and the overall impression is given that none of these people really were Communists, but, instead, were all just as falsely accused as the supposed `witches' of Salem.

This conclusion is then used to prove the statement that Americans are a fundamentally paranoid people, who basically lose their marbles very once in a while. (See book "Not Without Honor." on McCarthy and PBS documentary on Salem to find out why even Salem wasn't actually paranoia after all, but a toxic crop of moldy rye.)

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