The Bold and Magnificent Dream by Bruce Catton

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I rate this 5 stars for it is worth keeping for reference. The Bold and Magnificent Dream compresses 323 years of history into 530 pages of historical narrative and analysis with a bibliography, maps and an index. If you tolerated the study of history and remember it only as a memorization of names of explorers, military leaders and statesmen along with the dates of discovery and battles before testing, this book provides an excellent opportunity to read the story of history. There are no footnotes within the test to jar the reader from the story. Occasionally an unfamiliar word sent this reader to my dictionary where I learned the definition of a precise word.

Reading this book reminds me we Americans have a long history of political debate about how to fund a central government which became the federal government. The question of should a state militia be used to invade Canada during the skirmishes in the War of 1812 makes me wonder how we got to the point of using our national guard to provide support in current wars/military actions much farther away.



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With The Bold and Magnificent Dream, I started on another bookcase or subcategory of to-read from my home library. This bookcase contains historical narratives from authors such as Bruce Catton, William B. Catton, Allen W. Eckert, Jeff Shaara, Michael Shaara, and Shelby Foote. These are books my husband and I bought because they interest us. They are books I postponed reading until I could give the reading more thought, and I postponed reading because I was once too tired to read after employed work.