My Amazon book review

Anyone can post a book review at amazon.com , and a couple of years ago I reviewed Stephen E. Ambrose's TO AMERICA:  PERSONAL REFLECTIONS OF AN HISTORIAN.  Here's the review, to which I gave the heading "Pretty sad":

Stephen E. Ambrose sold a lot of history books in his later years, on subjects like D-Day. Yet he ended up a mediocre historian, devoted beyond reason to the "America the Good" talking point (a talking point most Americans want to hear, of course). At least that's what I have to conclude from reading TO AMERICA.

Ambrose mentions as one of his early influences a professor whose rule for writing history was "No editorials!" Yet TO AMERICA is full of almost relentless editorializing. As the title suggests, he doesn't have much bad to say about his native country. Ambrose's America-worship requires a certain selectiveness in his observations. For example, it's easier to insist that imperialism is not part of Teddy Roosevelt's legacy when your book says almost nothing about Latin America in the 20th century. (Ronald Reagan, the unpunished despoiler of Central America, is conspicuous in his absence.)

In addition, Ambrose isn't above blatantly unfair comparisons. Of course the American occupation of southern Korea proved far less brutal than the Soviet occupation of eastern Germany, but Korea hadn't launched a devastating invasion of the United States that left over 20 million Americans dead. His paean to Washington's nation-building in Korea, indeed, carefully omits any mention of the Syngman Rhee regime that Washington installed, full of Koreans who had collaborated with the hated Japanese occupiers and just as much a "puppet" regime as the communists in the north; of the massacres of Korean civilians by panicky GIs during the retreat at the start of the Korean War; or of Washington's acquiescence in the South Korean military's suppressions of democracy in 1961 and 1980.

I actually skipped the two chapters on World War II because I knew exactly what Ambrose was going to say. (It's that kind of book.)

The best thing about the book is Ambrose's personal reminiscences. I liked the story where he was conversing with a Native American, then looked at his watch and said, "It's time for lunch!" The Indian responded, "Only the white man has to look at his watch to know whether he's hungry!"

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I should write another book review someday.