A Patriot's History Of The United States

''A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror'' is a 2004 book on American history by Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen. Written from a conservative standpoint, it is a counterpoint to Howard Zinn's ''A People's History of the United States'' and asserts that the United States is an "overwhelmingly positive" force for good in the world. Schweikart said that he wrote it with Allen because he could not find an American history textbook without "leftist bias".

Reception

Larry Schweikart recounted to Steve Bannon that the book had respectable sales for several years after publication, but rocketed up the best seller charts in 2010 after being recommended by talk-show host Glenn Beck, hitting #1 on the ''New York Times'' and Amazon.com bestseller lists.

In a review in the conservative magazine ''National Review'', Matthew Spalding of The Heritage Foundation wrote: "''A Patriot's History'' rejects the economic determinism of Beard and Zinn, and others who 'wrongly assume that people were (and are) incapable of acting outside of self-interest.'" Spalding continued: "The rejected assumption, which is the foundation of ''A Patriot's History'', is that there are principles and purposes reflected in American history that make this imperfect country worthy of our affection, and that honest history should explain those principles and illustrate those purposes as the centerpiece of our nation's story."

Writing in the ''Claremont Review of Books'', David J. Bobb praised the book as a fine teaching tool, stating that every page of the book is "full of statements that would make Zinn snarl" and that it "gives students an example of honest historical inquiry.

The book faced criticism, as well. Reviewing the book in the journal ''The History Teacher'', David Hoogland Noon found that the book shows "ignorance of the basic parameters of actual historical scholarship", for instance "a single paragraph to the Japanese internment while squandering an entire page with denunciations of liberal historians and ''their'' treatments of the subject". Moreover, according to Noon, "the authors make claims that are not even remotely endorsed by the footnoted sources."

''New York Times'' book review editor Barry Gewen called ''A Patriot's History'' "a frankly nationalistic—often blatantly partisan—text in which the United States is presented as having a duty to lead while other countries, apparently, have an obligation to follow".

Criticizing the book from a conservative perspective, Paul Gottfried in ''The American Conservative'' characterized ''A Patriot's History'' as historiography: "...many of the views that this patriotic historian considers far leftist are actually those of the Old Right... hebroad area of agreement about heroes and villains—and about how we reached the glorious present by overcoming the prejudices of the past—unites the liberal and patriotic versions of American history. This is the new consensus history, and it leaves little room for the Old Right's take on the past to get a fair hearing."

In his review of the book in ''The Wall Street Journal'', Brendan Miniter called a ''Patriot's History'' a "fluent account of America from the discovery of the Continent up to the present day", and wrote that the book serves to "remind us what a few good individuals can do in just a few short centuries."

John Coleman reviewing the book in the ''Institute for Humane Studies'', praised it as "thorough and easy to read" and stated:

References

External links

The book's website

2004 non-fiction books
Books about foreign relations of the United States
Books about politics of the United States
Books about economic history
History books about the United States
Conservative media in the United States
Collaborative non-fiction books
Sentinel (publisher) books
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