Gr 5 Up-The strengths of this series entry are a lively, engaging style; short chapters; many black-and-white illustrations; and the inclusion of lots of stories about women and minorities. Hakim's conversational storytelling style draws readers into the years from 1800 to the eve of the Civil War. Through sidebars, inserts, and the extensive use of first-hand accounts, the author lets readers experience the lives of mountain men and pioneer women, Mormons and mill workers, railroad men and stagecoach travelers. She covers traditional subjects such as the Western expansion, new inventions and developments that linked the country, the rise of manufacturing and the growth of cities, and the increasingly tense coexistence of slave-owning and free states. More depth is offered in sidebars on specific individuals and events such as the Amistad rebellion, the growing American literary and artistic movement, Nathaniel Bowditch, the whaling trade, the women's suffrage movement, and the Underground Railroad. The narrative leads readers straight to the next volume in the series to see what happens next. The format is busy and the pages have a xeroxed look, but the print is not difficult to read. A good choice for browsers, report writers, and storytellers looking for historical anecdotes.-Sally Bates Goodroe, Houston Public Library (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Well written and fascinating to read, the seventh and eighth books in the series document life in the United States during the end of the 1800s and beginning of the 1900s and are illustrated with hundreds of black-and-white photographs, drawings, and maps. The writing, however, tends to be flippant at times -- which may bother some and amuse others. Bib., ind. From HORN BOOK 1994, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

The second in Hakim's projected ten-volume ``A History of US'' (also available: The First Americans, ISBN 0-19-507745-8). The tone is notably informal, even jocular, but not at the expense of content. Focusing here on Jamestown, the New England Puritans, and the other European colonists, the author brings a formidable amount of illuminating detail to a lively narrative, makes valuable connections between past and present, introduces important concepts in their original context, shares a contagious enthusiasm for history's pivotal ideas, colorful characters, and their stories, distinguishes between documented fact and conjecture, and reiterates such thoughts as that--among imported ideas, as well as both settlers and Indians--``Some are good, some are not so good,'' with examples to prove it. Her careful depiction of the Native American point of view is remarkably evenhanded. The breezy style occasionally leads to imprecision (``the Pope...didn't approve of all that marrying. So King Henry founded the Church of England''), but generally the text is lucid, accurate, and extraordinarily immediate; questions addressed to the reader are genuinely stimulating and provocative. Sidebars and captions amplify the main text; the many period illustrations are often crisply reproduced, but sometimes reduced beyond clarity (the flimsy see-through paper doesn't help). In every sense, a fresh look at our history; Hakim's perceptive eye, no-nonsense approach, and wit are all welcome. Chronology; ``More Books to Read'' (from an Aliki biography to Miller's The Crucible); index. (Nonfiction. 10+)

Gr. 4-8. The second volume in the History of US series recounts the settling of the original colonies, from the founding of Jamestown in 1607 to the opening of the Wilderness Road in 1775, which allowed settlers to traverse the Appalachian range and reach the interior of the continent. Hakim writes like a storyteller, relating seventeenth-century experiences to current events and drawing analogies that make the seventeenth-century happenings intelligible. The book is laid out in a way that dispels any notion that it is a textbook: virtually every page has an illustration; sidebars give anecdotal or supplementary information; and the typeface is a respectable size. Hakim deals with the colonies one at a time, documenting their founding, their type of government, and the principal occupations of the settlers before and after they came to the New World. She sometimes urges readers to insert themselves into a situation in order to better understand the experience. Having an author question or address the reader is frequently annoying, but Hakim's comments work. Black-and-white illustrations include photographs of vintage paintings and documents, maps, line drawings, and decorative elements. Time line; bibliography. (Reviewed Oct. 1, 1993)0195077474Sheilamae O'Hara