I'm a history teacher that assigns this "book of death" to all the pitiful wretches that have written about their trials here. I am here to offer a defense.

First of all, I've read enough books about history to know that, while there are dry spots in Mr. Ellis's work (especially in the chapter dealing with Hamilton's compromise with Madison, in which a lot of Hamilton's economic plan is discussed), the work as a whole is very insightful. The "dullness" that a lot of students seem to be referring to is what others would call "depth" and "substance." Mr. Ellis doesn't jump from topic to topic in an attempt to satiate painfully short attention spans. Rather, he takes a few events and discusses them thoroughly (well, thoroughly relative to most history textbooks these days). The brevity of the book obviously limits its thoroughness, but I suppose that it would have only made the students wail all the more if the book had been 600 pages, as many works are, rather than the 250-ish pages that it is.

In his use of these stories, Mr. Ellis makes a convincing case for an overall view of American history, which I have found very helpful, both in teaching my class and in my own continued investigations into American history, and find to be a useful jumping-off point at the beginning of the year. So my response, in an attempt to balance the glut of negativity about this book on this message board, is to offer that perhaps the poor reception by students has less to do with the book itself and more to do with the fact that they were REQUIRED to read it.