Did Not Finish.

I’m disappointed in this book because the premise sounded very interesting.

There were two things that discouraged me from continuing to read this book. One was that I didn’t particularly care for the author’s voice. I found the intro to be written in a rather cavalier manner, and I thought it would get better, but I felt like his voice was too casual for me. I think this is due in part to the author being a journalist writing a popular history book, rather than a historian writing a serious history text, which is more of what I’m used to.

I also wish the author went more in depth to explain some of the phenomena he discussed which were super interesting. For instance, he talked about pamphlets that falsely advertised the US as a haven of gold and silver in order to try and convince people to settle and participate in British colonialism. However, he then would quickly move on to the next topic. The book suffered from too much breadth and not enough depth.