The American Century

The principal author of this very fine and handsome popular history is the editorial director of the New York Daily News, Atlantic Monthly and U.S. News & World Report, and former president and publisher of the Random House Trade Group. Evans was born in Britain and moved to America only in 1984, so his retelling of the American story from 1889 to 1989 bears the refreshing stamp of a non-American sensibility, with some surprising focuses among the hundreds found in the text--Eisenhower's engineering of coups in Guatemala and Iran, for example. Evans employs a tolerant, skeptical, dispassionate tone that makes for consistently absorbing reading, but what elevates his book above the (also laudable) The Century, by Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster (reviewed above) is Evans's intellectual acuity, as exemplified in his strong thesis, which views the century as one concerned with, primarily, the struggle for democracy, both within the country and without. Evans's treatment of relations among the American races--not just black/white but all races--and of the labor movement is particularly impressive, full and candid. The organization of the book is user-friendly. Each chapter begins with a commentary that sets out the theme of the chapter and is followed by a series of two-page spreads touching on different aspects of the era. The photos--900, but none in color as in the Jennings/Brewster--are evocative and telling, and there are some seldom-seen gems among them, such as a photo of Ho Chi Minh at the Versailles peace conference in 1919. Like the Jennings/Brewster, this is a book more for browsing than for serious study, reminiscent of, though less weighty than, Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States. Both this book and the Jennings/Brewster are admirable productions, but readers looking for the deeper, more unexpected text will find it here, while for pure visual splendor the Jennings takes the prize. First serial to U.S News & World Report; BOMC alternate; History Book Club main selection. (Oct.)