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A History of US: Book 8: An Age of Extremes 1880-1917 (History of Us, 8)
by Joy Hakim
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (2002-09-15)
ISBN: 0195153332
EAN: 9780195153330
Dewy Decimal #: 973.8
Hardcover: 160 pages
Edition: 3
Reading Level: Young Adult
SKU: 08010204
Condition: Like New As issued n
Comments: Hardback. Like new condition. Issued with illustrated cover and no DJ. Cover like new. Tight binding and crisp clean text. Beautiful book.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
For the captains of industry-men like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, and Henry Ford-the Gilded Age is a time of big money. Technology boomed with the invention of trains, telephones, electric lights, harvesters, vacuum cleaners, and more. But for millions of immigrant workers, it is a time of big struggles, with adults and children alike working 12 to 14 hours a day under extreme, dangerous conditions. The disparity between the rich and the poor was dismaying, which prompted some people to action. In An Age of Extremes, you'll meet Mother Jones, Ida Tarbell, Big Bill Haywood, Sam Gompers, and other movers and shakers, and get swept up in the enthusiasm of Teddy Roosevelt. You'll also watch the United States take its greatest role on the world stage since the Revolution, as it enters the bloody battlefields of Europe in World War I.
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Customer Reviews
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Misinformation, bias, and a non-American's view
Rating  (1)
Date: 2007-09-11
3 out of 7 customers found this reveiw helpful
Joy Hakim is by far one of the worst writers alive today. In each one of her "A History of US" books, she perpetuates false history and calls them "facts". Her biased writing has a bent in favor of Britain and all of its colonies and a bent against Americans. Unfortunately, this is a side effect of authors who write basing their books on secondary information, rather than first-hand accounts (like letters, historical documents, etc.). Hakim has copied misinformation previously printed in inaccurate history books and has added her own bias to make a truly unreliable source of US history.
In the very first chapter of book 8, she goes on about what a wonderful man Andrew Carnegie was. This is a perfect example of her biased writing. Andrew Carnegie came to the US with his family from Scotland in the mid-1800s. He amassed a great deal of wealth by stepping on the backs of his workers, whom he treated quite poorly. They lived in squalor with no indoor plumbing in tiny huts near his factories. For a typical 12-hour day, which they worked seven days a week, they were paid an average of $2.50 per day. Never quite rich enough, he cut wages again and again, while lengthening his workers work days. He quashed union after union at every one of his factories until he got to the Homestead Steel Works in Homestead, Pennsylvania. When he bought this mill, it was a union mill.
Hakim claims that the Homestead Strike, which occurred on July 6, 1892, was not Carnegie's responsibility and that he was appalled at what happened. No, he actually ordered his business partner, Henry Clay Frick, to lockout the workers, instigate a strike, and then fire every one of the workers. The two men communicated this "deal" by letters while Carnegie was vacationing in his massive castle in Scotland. While Hakim goes on to spend four pages commenting on what a wonderful philanthropist Carnegie was, she fails to mention that most of his money was spent overseas, not in the US, and a great deal was spent in Scotland and Britain. She describes the Homestead Strike as a steelworkers' strike of union workers. No, it began as lockout instigated by Carnegie and Frick before the contract expired. Frick and Carnegie then sent in 300 Pinkerton hired guns to take over the town and were fought back by the townspeople who met the Pinkertons at the river before they could even step off the barge. Hakim left so much out and got so many facts wrong in this important moment in US History, than I can't imagine how it would ever get published in the US. Of course, it didn't. It was published by Oxford Press in England.
Any American should be suspicious of reading a US History book published in England, of all places. With each book in this series that we've read, we have found glaring errors. Hakim can't even manage to get numbers right. In the Homestead Strike, as it is called, there were 3,000 striking workers, and less than one third of them were union. Hakim claimed they were all union (big mistake there). She goes on to claim that 20 workers were killed and 4 Pinkertons. The real numbers were 7 workers and 3 Pinkertons (big mistake there). Carnegie and Frick made sure that the workers never worked in steel again and were blacklisted, while Hakim makes it sound like they were happily invited back into the factory. Before the Homestead Strike, the town of Homestead was a thriving, happy, pleasant town. It was a pigsty and ghetto after the strike when most of the people were forced out of town by Carnegie and Frick and the remaining non-union workers' wages were cut in half.
I found it particularly sickening (and so did my children) that Hakim makes Carnegie out to be a saint when he tries buying his soul back from you know who before he dies and gives away most of his money. Of course, he does it so he will be more famous, well-liked, and treated well. It certainly is not out of the kindness of his heart, for he has spent decades destroying the lives of thousands of his workers. Most of his money is spent outside of the US because inside of the US he is absolutely loathed.
It saddens me to think of all the homeschooling families who allow their children to read these books without any supplemental history education. Watch "10 Days that Changed America" or some of the other historical DVDs that are put together and read other history books. The only reason we bother reading Hakim's books at all is because we paid so much for the set. We'll be burning them when we've finished.
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Joy Hakim looks at the extremes of the Gilded Age
Rating  (5)
Date: 2003-08-09
9 out of 10 customers found this reveiw helpful
Joy Hakim forewarns her young readers that "An Age of Extremes 1880-1917," volume 8 in A History of US, talks a lot about Economics, but also assures them that this time around it will not be a "yawn." This particular volume looks at the United States at what we now refer to as the turn of the last century, what Mark Twain called the "Gilded Age." However, the preface sets up the idea that this period was an age of extremes that saw business tycoons with great wealth and millions of immigrants living in poverty. While the Brooklyn Bridge and Panama Canal were being built Jim Crow laws were established in the South and the Indian wars ended in the West. Underneath this all Hakim reminds her readers that the United States is a nation of practical idealists and that in contrast to the Founding Fathers like Benjamin Franklin, the businessmen of the Gilded Age, such as Cornelius Vanderbilt, were unscrupulous rather than altruistic."An Age of Extremes" basically breaks down into five sections. The first (Chapters 1-7) starts with the rags to riches story of Andrew Carnegie and other magnates, as well as a dreamer of a different type in L. Frank Baum. The second (Chapters 8-14) covers American politics at the end of the 19th century, contrasting Republican support for big business with the rise of the Populists and William Jennings Bryan. The third (Chapters 15-21) offers the flip side of the first, focusing on the plight of the working class. The fourth (Chapters 22-28) tells how the Gilded Age turned Progressive, beginning with the Muckrakers and ending with the emergence of Theodore Roosevelt on the national stage. The final section (Chapters 29-37) begins with America's imperialistic interests in the Spanish-American War and ends with Woodrow Wilson leading the nation into a World War to save democracy. In between, T.R. remains the dominant figure. As always, Hakim's book is richly illustrated with period photographs, paintings, editorial cartoons and the like, including a photograph of the Dakota apartment building seen from Central Park after its construction which will strike a chord with fans of John Lennon. The pictures reinforce Hakim's point that this period was a time of both prosperity and poverty, of idealism and corruption. The volume ends with the U.S. entering the First World War, setting up the revolutionary changes that would come afterwards in the Jazz Age. The strength of Hakim's volumes remains her ability to engage her young readers. This might be a good old-fashioned juvenile history text, but it has the energy of a CD-Rom or a great Internet website. The series is perfect for parents who are home schooling their children because Hakim "talks" to her readers as if she were teaching them in a classroom, anticipating questions and demanding that they look at history from the perspective of the people they are reading about in these pages.
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