Synopses & Reviews
Thomas Jefferson complains about haggling over the Declaration of Independence ... Jack London guides us through the rubble of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake ... Langston Hughes visits the Scottsboro Boys on death row ... Andy Warhol paints the scene at Studio 54 ... John Seabrook receives e-mail from Bill Gates. Three hundred eyewitnesses -- some famous, some anonymous -- give their personal accounts of the great moments that make up our past, from Columbus to cyberspace, and infuse them with a freshness and urgency no historian can duplicate.
David Colbert has brought together a multitude of voices to create a singularly rich American narrative. Here are the vivid impressions of men and women who were witnesses to and participants in these and other dramatic moments: the first colony in Virginia, the Salem witch trials, the Boston Tea Party, the Oklahoma land rush, the Scopes Trial, the bombing of Nagasaki, the lunch-counter sit-ins at the outset of the civil rights movement, New York City's Stonewall Riot, the fall of Saigon, and the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
With unparalleled and thrilling immediacy, these excerpts from diaries, private letters, memoirs, and newspapers paint a fascinating picture of the evolving drama of American life.
Synopsis
"For a swift-moving, kaleidoscope view of U.S. history, you can't do better than to leaf through the on-the-scence accounts that make up Eyewitness to America". -- Parade
Napoleon Bonaparte announces from his bathtub that he will sell Louisiana to the Americans....Jack London surveys the rubble of the San Francisco earthquake and fire....Rosa Parks decides not to give up her seat on the bus....Andy Warhol meets Vladimir Horowitz at Studio 54....
These people are among the hundreds we find in this extraordinary collection of documentary narratives, each eyewitness account putting the reader at the center of a telling moment in American history. From five hundred years of diaries and memoirs, letters and reportage, David Colbert has pieced together a fascinating montage of our nation that offers new perspectives on familiar and not so familiar events. From Babe Ruth to Beatlemania, from the Alamo to the atom bomb, from the Boston Tea Party to the L.A. riots, here is a rich trove of voices and events that is fresh, urgent, immediate -- and immensely pleasurable to read.
Description
1243234 Includes bibliographical references (p. 651-667) and index.
About the Author
David Colbert is a writer and former Editor at HarperCollins. He lives in San Francisco and New York.
From the Hardcover edition.