Jefferson's America by Julie M. Fenster

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Product Details

The President, The Purchase, and the Explorers who Transformed a Nation


Wow!! I did it. I finally made it through this book. It feels like I have been reading and reading and reading and reading, are you getting the idea, it.

When I was looking to pick a book a long while back now, I wasn't finding anything that was striking me and I decided I should read more history and learn about the past, so I saw this book and thought it would be a good one to start with. I was unprepared for the size of the book. I'm not sure why I thought it would be a smallish book, think novel size, but it's a nice hardcover book instead.

It turned out to be a very interesting read. It talked a lot about Lewis and Clark and their explorations and also some of the other ones that you don't read as much about. Zebulon Pike, for example, I knew the name, but never realized that's where Pike's Peak got its name. Then there were explorers like Freeman and Dunbar who I had never heard of. So it definitely fulfilled the thing of me reading history and learning more about our country and the people that helped discover and settle it.

I will be honest, I was probably looking for a little less in depth history lesson, but I thought Julie did do a good job of getting the details. To me, there were so many names and places mentioned that if you didn't read it consistently on a daily basis, you lost track of who she was talking about. Another thing I didn't like as well was she could switch from explorer to explorer to talking about Jefferson, the President, to some other place all within a page or two, so it hopped around a lot. I didn't like that as much, but I will say Julie made the transition very easy. The writing isn't disjointed or hard to follow

So if you are looking for an in-depth view of the Louisiana Purchase and the Cold War of that era between the United States and Spain, then I would recommend this book.

This book was given me by Blogging for Books for the purpose of reading and writing a review. All opinions expressed are my own.

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