This is a standard 8th grade text for American Histoy. I have read the book along with my son who is taking the course and have found it stimulating and informative. As a consequnce of reading this text, I have read several additional sources as a consequnce of stimulation from this text, as history is not my field of expertise. This book is an excellent choice, as well, for anyone who is not a student and does not have a great deal of time or wishes to go into that beyond the necessary to have a good review of American History. At times, there is certainly a revisionist, politically correct for the 90's, approach here, but overall the information is well organized and well written for nearly any reading level, including the college graduate. With this years presidential contest, it was really interesting to look back at the elections of 1876 and 1888 and how they came out and why they did so. This text is good about discussing social movements and in that arena goes far beyond a "names and dates" approach. It is a good resource for building a knowledge base for our country's history.