Great Events in the History of North and South America

Goodrich, Charles A. (Charles Augustus), 1790-1862Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.0
Word count
1.7M words
Chapters
169

Tags

English Originals World History Historical ReappraisalColonial EraAmerican HistoryRise and FallHeroismDocumentary NarrativePopular NarrativeNorth and South AmericaSocial ObservationMajor Events

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Great Events in the History of North and South America by Charles A. GoodrichAuthor: Goodrich, Charles A. (Charles Augustus), 1790-1862,Language: English, Class: E151: History: America: United States, Release Date: Mar 25, 2013

Editor's review

Charles A. Goodrich was a nineteenth-century American author of popular history. Organized around key events, this book traces the history of North and South America from colonial settlement to the modern era. Its approach bears clear marks of its time: the narrative is concise, judgments are sharp, and the emphasis falls on major events and figures rather than on source criticism or scholarly debate. For today's readers, its value lies mainly in offering a clearly structured English historical reader that helps map the basic timeline of American history, while also serving as a sample of nineteenth-century American ideas about history education. The book's treatment of Indigenous peoples, colonization, and political events reflects the mainstream perspectives of its era, and readers should maintain a critical awareness, comparing it with modern historical scholarship. It is suitable as English-language history reading material or as a supplementary text for an introductory course on American history.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Read the table of contents first to map the sequence of events, and make a timeline of American history to support your reading.
  2. After each chapter, check the facts and narrative stance against a modern general history.
  3. Pay attention to the book's wording about Indigenous peoples and colonizers, and take critical reading notes.
  4. Use the book as English-language history reading material, pacing yourself chapter by chapter and building up terminology.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
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  62. 62
  63. 63
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  70. 70
  71. 71
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  73. 73
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  90. 90
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  165. 165
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  168. 168
  169. 169

FAQ

Can this book serve as an authoritative reference on American history? It is not suitable as an authoritative reference. It was written in the nineteenth century, its narrative is concise and carries the mainstream biases of its time, and it lacks modern source criticism. It is better suited as an introduction for mapping the timeline and as English reading material; facts and opinions need to be checked against modern historical scholarship.
Is there much content on South America in the book? Although the title covers both North and South America, the author was a popularizer of American history, and the narrative clearly favors North America, with the South American portion relatively brief. If your main interest is Latin American history, it is advisable to choose a dedicated work on Latin American history as supplementary reading.
Is it suitable as extracurricular English reading for middle school students? The language difficulty is moderate and the events are narrated clearly, so it can serve as extracurricular reading for middle school students with relatively good English. However, some formulations in the book carry the biases of their era, so it is best read with guidance from a teacher or parent and discussed alongside modern historical materials, rather than accepting its views directly.

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About the author

Goodrich, Charles A. (Charles Augustus), 1790-1862 Author · American · 1790–1862

Charles A. Goodrich (1790–1862) was an American Congregational minister and writer. Over his career he compiled a variety of historical and biographical works, the best known of which is Great Events in the History of North and South America, which recounts the history of the Americas through its major events. His books circulated widely in nineteenth-century America and helped bring historical knowledge to ordinary readers. Because verifiable public information is limited, few details of his life are known, but his surviving works show a talent for laying out history in narrative form, with a preference for pivotal figures and events and a style aimed at general readers rather than specialists.