For example, this book explains why the initial British colonies of Plymouth and Jamestown almost starved: redistribution of wealth. The simple solution was to assign private property ownership. By the next harvest the result of private land ownership led to overwhelmingly plentiful food and led to our current Thanksgiving celebration. Few modern texts mention that it was primarily the lack of private property rights that led to starvation in these colonies.
One word of caution...it reads easily and provides an excellent overview, but does not go into sufficient detail for middle school. Supplemental materials are required.
From the first page to the last, Eggleston's clarity and obvious love for the subject infused me with the desire to push on, thus learning what was to happen next. The bite-sized chapters (which are about four pages of text each) ensured that this desire did not wane out of a failure to mentally digest a ton of facts all at once. And, to top it all off, the pictures and maps inside this book actually added to (rather than distracted me from) its content.
As a current student, I can only tell you that I would love for one of my teachers to have used, or to use, a textbook like this for one of my classes. It contains nothing but solid American history and is a textbook that is at once both readable and immensely worth reading. I'm giving it five out of five stars.
