The American Story: 100 True Tales
from American History is a magnificent way to introduce the enormous span of our country’s
history to a young person. Author Jennifer Armstrong describes her book as “a
patchwork quilt of history…each piece can be looked at alone but it is also
connected to all the others in patterns that reveal themselves with time and
distance.” Each gem of a story is a revealing portrait of a person or event.
The one hundred tales are arranged chronologically beginning with the
establishment of St. Augustine in la Florida in 1565 and ending with the
national election in 2000. Stories fall into five thematic groups – Settlement and Colonies (1565-1778), A New Republic (1791-1863), Expansion
and Invention (1867-1899), Becoming Modern (1900-1945), and Brave New World
(1946-2000) – but each is a unique
look at a fascinating episode in history. Some are celebratory; some are
tragic. Readers may well be familiar with Benjamin Franklin’s kite experiment
with lightning, with steel-driving John Henry’s contest with a steam-powered
drill, with Rosa Park’s challenge to Montgomery’s racist bus system, and with
the success of the Endeavor in repairing the Hubble Space Telescope. They
may not know about the uprising of the Pueblo people against the Spanish in the
southwest in the late 1600s, the cloud of locusts that really did destroy the
wheat crop of Laura Ingalls and her family in 1894, the invention of the potato
chip at Moon’s Lake House in Saratoga or the Watergate break-in that forced the
resignation of President Nixon in 1973. Engaging illustrations by Roger Roth
grace each story. Adding to the rich collection, Armstrong has
created a list of more than twenty Story Arcs that allow connections to be made
among the tales – Exploration, Disease and Medicine, Immigrants,
Communications, Native Americans, and Newspapers, to cite a few. An extensive
bibliography, a list of recommended Internet resources on American history and
an index complete this true gift to readers. Ages 8 to adult.
