Movie Review

The design of a survey course in United States history to 1877 always faces formidable challenges of thematic organization and content selection. A course delivered through film and limited to thirteen hours confronts a particularly difficult task. This ambitious video course successfully presents an accessible and cohesive historical narrative about the regions of North America that would be encompassed within the United States. Designed for distance learning, the course provides a sophisticated overview of American history and is well suited for the many students who will take no further courses in the subject. It not only offers a richly textured script, it demonstrates the kind of questions and analytical skills that historians are uniquely qualified to present to a broad student audience.	1
Each of the twenty-six segments explores a topic in American history through a combination of narration, commentary by scholars, and readings from primary sources. The actors who read the historical documents are shown in profile and through overlapping images, effectively keeping the emphasis on the well-chosen texts. The commentaries by scholars, a large group including Joyce Appleby, Eric Foner, Linda Kerber, James McPherson, and Gordon Wood, make a substantive contribution to the narrative rather than interrupt the story. The three formats are coordinated to create a tightly organized and densely informative script.	2
The opening segment surveys various societies in North America on the eve of European settlement and in the process sets out several of the themes that unify the course. From the northwest coast to the land of the Pueblos in the Southwest and across to the Atlantic coast, Native American societies were marked by complex trading relationships, cultural interconnections, and dynamic political organization. European contact is seen in a continuum of adaptation and redefinition through interaction with new peoples, new political cultures, and new economic functions. Throughout the course, the United States emerges as a society defined by its ability to accommodate diverse populations and to expand participation in existing political institutions. While never suggesting a progressive path to freedom and opportunity, much of the course focuses on what James Oliver Horton defines as the struggle of people trying to push the nation in the direction of the ideals set out in its "founding sacred documents."	3
The thematic emphasis on pluralism and inclusivity leads somewhat surprisingly to a narrative that follows quite traditional benchmarks and organization. Seventeenth-century settlement is told largely through the examples of Virginia and Massachusetts. The coming of the Revolution is the story of colonial defense of political prerogatives threatened by acts of Parliament. In this account, the most important figures in the Revolution are John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and, above all, George Washington. The roles of women and African Americans in the Revolution are duly noted, but the script says little about the internal colonial divisions that complicated the resistance to British rule.	4
The traditional focus of the narrative continues with the contests between Federalists and Republicans and with segments on Alexander Hamilton and Jefferson as representative of competing and persistent visions of the ideal American society. The rise of the Democracy centers on the public career of Andrew Jackson, and the coming of the Civil War is told largely through the succession of political crises in the 1850s. The authors and commentators are attentive to recent social history, especially as it relates to gender and race, but throughout the course the emphasis is on public life and frequently on those in formal positions of political authority.	. . .