I enjoyed reading the Hakim book. The author did a nice job making you, the reader, feel as if she was talking to you directly, teaching you history. I enjoyed the brief chapters. As we all are probably aware, some textbooks drag out long, boring chapters. She did a nice job summarizing the wealth of information. It's easy to use as well. If you're ever wondering about a specific topic during this time period, you can easily look up the chapter and get a basic idea of the topic you are searching for. However, I feel that this may be a downfall to the book. Key word: basic. I would not want to soley rely on this book as a textbook for my class. It just skims the surface of American history. I need the "whole" idea to completely understand history. This book seems as if it pulls the big ideas from history and threw it in a book. It kind of confused me at times.
Two pieces of information from the book that I learned...
1) Long ago someone could get arrested and thrown into jail and nobody would tell him what he had done wrong. Sometimes they even forgot about a person in jail. They died before they would even know what he did wrong. I find that very interesting.
2)Yankee Doodle...we all know that song! The British made that song up to insult Americans. Who knew?
That's what I mean about this book....It gives you cool, little facts about history that typically get lost in the teaching of American history. Good book to keep for the future!
Yes, the book can seem to skim the surface of things but I found that it gave me just enough information to pique my interest to learn more. I really enjoy trivia so I guess I was engaged with Hakim's writing style without feeling overloaded with too much information. I also did not realize you could be thrown in jail without being given a cause . . . thank goodness for those 'mongrel dogs' who established this country!
ReplyDeleteHolly,
ReplyDeleteI couldn't put the book down once I started reading it. Hakim's usage of pictures, bold print, and neat little fact kept me hooked. In one of the earlier chapters she even wrote the words "remember that" in parenthesis to emphasis that was an important fact.
I agree with you that she does a great job summarizing the key points.
In spite of overwhelming enthusiasm for Hakim's book, some others have voiced concern that it may not serve well as a primary text. However, I also think from the responses about how people remembered their history classes and their history content that we often overestimate how much students actually understand and retain the more traditional approach to instruction. Maybe the better way to go would be to use a text like Hakim's as the primary text and supplement it with a more traditional text as needed. Just a thought.
ReplyDelete