Review: American Cultural History: A Very Short Introduction

American Cultural History: A Very Short Introduction by Eric Avila
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This one didn’t catch my imagination as much as I thought. Have you ever read a serious conspiracy theory book? In those that I’ve read, the narrative tends to bounce all over the place, tying people, events, history together showing connections, often fantastical. I think of the movie “A Brilliant Mind” where John Nash has notes taped to the wall with strings connecting them in a tangle. That was what this book felt like. The author bounces between topics with ping-pong speed, connecting many topics with odd thoughts, coincidences, trivia, and the occasional ah-ha. Topics touched on include disco, movies, pre-Revolutionary War American Indian appreciation societies, and early American authors. At their best, these kinds of books turn out like James Burke’s “Connections”, and at their worst, or more their most campiest, they turn out like Neal Wilgus’ “The Illuminoids”. This book falls in the middle, closer to Burke’s book. As it is one of the “very short introduction” books, you can’t expect a lot of critical thought about those connections or completeness of topics, but it was fun to read in a casual way due to the wide variety of occasionally compelling history.

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