The eminent historian Wilfred M. McClay has produced his masterwork, a sweeping overview of American history titled Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story. Written most immediately for high school students taking Advanced Placement courses, the book looks and feels the part of a history textbook. But unlike most of those dreary tomes, it reads like a bestselling thriller. In finely wrought yet readable prose, history comes alive in McClay’s expansive and thoughtful appraisal of the American story.
The ground the book covers is immense. McClay begins by discussing the first people who made their way across the Bering Strait tens of thousands of years ago and ends with some thoughts on President Donald Trump.
McClay rejects the ideological retelling of history for partisan ends represented by the likes of Howard Zinn. He denies that history is a simplistic dialectic of competing “isms.” Instead, McClay examines the vast palette of rich and deep colors that make up life as it is actually lived, complete with human beings who possess “an all-too-human mixture of admirable and unadmirable qualities.” He recounts America’s history not from the improbable vantage point of neutrality (as if humans could achieve such a thing) but of scholarly objectivity, neither embellishing America’s achievements nor hiding its shortcomings.
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