Rating: 
Summary: An excellent introductory history text
Review: All too often, students of history, and even history instructors, dismiss the study of history as a boring and irrelevant procession of endless names and statistics. Some history books, indeed, are rather dry and boring to read. This one is not. The authors here present a fresh, vibrant take on the oft-told tale of American history; it succeeds in re-invigorating the often stale story with new life. It accomplishes this by being written in a way that is not only informative, but also thoroughly enjoyable. Beefing up the standard information and statistics with frequently amusing and interesting anecdotes and multitude of charts, graphs, pictures, and relevant contemporary quotations, the book brings history to life. Written in this style, the book reads more like a novel than your standard dry history text. The style is unconventional, witty, and even quite often amusing. It also avoids falling into the trap of the ultra-patriotic, non-objective, trumpet-blowing agenda of many other textbooks -- while also managing to avoid boiling over with authorial opinion and negative presentations. The length of chapters is just about right as well, neither too short nor overlong. The book is rounded out with a nice appendix, which consists of the Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution, and a wide array of charts and graphs, as well as an index, though a fully-fledged glossary is missed. All in all, this is a great introductory text for those wishing to know more about American history, useful to both the student and the individual reader.
Rating: 
Summary: You think this is a leftist history? Give me a break
Review: The American Pageant is, overall, a textbook which tries far too hard to be amusing, utilizing forced metaphors, extraneous facts, and a nickname for anyone who has ever been given one, and yet it still does a sound job of teaching the facts in a way which is easier to remember than the average dry textbook. However, complaints that the book is overly liberal are completely unfounded. The authors may be slightly to the left of center, but are not remotely the radicals many reviewers make them out to be. You want a leftist history? Try reading Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Anyone complaining about the liberal bent of this textbook, on the other hand, reveals more about their own political philosophy than anything else.
Rating: 
Summary: Fails to present facts objectively
Review: I'm a sophomore at West Windsor Plainsboro--using it in my American Studies I class. When I first picked up this book, all I saw was "For Advanced High School Students" on the front cover, and I thought, hey, this book must provide some very insightful information and deep analysis into American history. I was greatly mistaken. Words are often chosen without thought and superlatives and adjectives are used excessively, for example, "the Royal Navy had finally retaliated by throwing a ruinous naval blockade along America's coast and by landing raiding parties almost at will"--immediately preceded AND followed by a discussion of the nationalism surge and economic successes following the War of 1812 as well as "the devastating defeat of the British to Andrew Jackson", jumping from one extreme situation to another with no historical transition. Moreover, the authors are more concerned in presenting their own, often extremely liberal opinions, and attempting to cast them upon future generations that study from their textbook, instead of including objective information, often calling entire presidential administrations they dislike as "failures." When perusing the book, I feel like I'm reading a tabloid of exaggerated truths. While it is important to put life into your writing, when done to an extreme in a textbook, it becomes burdensome and false. There are certainly better alternatives to this "comic book."
Rating:
Summary: a good book
Review: THis is a good intro into American history for the AP History course in high school. I used this textbook and did well on the exam. I don't like the white bashing in this book but I guess many textbooks these days do that. I would have liked more on the contemporary events but then again the AP doesn't test beyond the gulf war (as of today). That said, this book does a great job of explaining overall themes such as manifest destiny, slavery, and the conflict between the North and South leading up to the Civil War. I enjoyed especially the coverage of the New Deal. If you are in a hurry to prepare for the AP exam, this is the book to get.
Rating:
Summary: History to the Left of Us
Review: History professor Larry Schweikart writes a very informative review of this book in the American Enterprise Online. Here is a portion.Thomas Bailey et al.'s American Pageant, long considered perhaps the best college-level text on U.S. history, devotes not one, but two charts to deficits and the national debt in the 1980s, in which the deficit and debt lines appear to go literally off the map under Reagan's watch. In the chart on the national debt, the bias is even more stark: Large bars across the debt time-line indicate important events in American history ("Depression," "World War II ends," "Vietnam War"). Except the one that crosses the skyrocketing debt. It reads not, say, "Last Decade of Cold War" but -- you guessed it -- "Reagan Administration." Worse, the charts are both badly statistically flawed and conceptually wrong. Students (and most instructors) would likely not notice that the legend reads "Billions of dollars." Hmmm? Not "Billions of Real Dollars" or "Billions of Dollars as a Ratio of GNP"? When I recalculated the American Pageant data (for both deficits and debt) in real dollars, then graphed it as a share of GNP, I was stunned. It did not even resemble the original. As a share of GNP, the debt under Reagan barely equaled that of the Kennedy or Truman administrations, and was dwarfed by Roosevelt's New Deal. One error of this type is a mistake. Two in a single chapter suggest deliberate manipulation.
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Summary: A fluffy facade tries to cover a dearth of facts
Review: The American Pageant is to American History as The National Enquirer is to The Nation--in other words, this is an outlandish, flowery tome with little regard for objectivity or relevant, accurate historical fact. The so-called "witty" text and colorful graphics are pathetic cries for attention from a book that sadly lacks actual content.
The oft-mentioned political bias is bad enough, but the main bias of the book is toward crude generalizations--no matter what the topic--and irrelevant (and often phony) nicknames and statistics. It's absurd to call this an "ideal textbook" for Advanced Placement scholars when it has so many incorrect statistics and childish analogies. People who don't know American history enjoy this book for its sugar coating and "engaging writing style," but a true student who knows his facts would scoff at this volume's inadequacies. Compared with the oft-used Palmer/Colton text for AP Euro courses, this book simply wilts. If what you want to do is prepare for an AP test, the "Cracking..." book is more accurate, shorter, and, in this case, ... cheaper.
Rating:
Summary: A lively, comprehensive review of American History.
Review: If you want an intelligent, well written and always-interesting overview of American History, this is it. Bailey has a witty, engaging writing style, and he presents complex issues and ideas in a way that is very easy to understand. In this book, you will find a scholarly but lively account of the events, conflicts, debates and personalities that form the history of our great nation. Probably the best written history text I have ever read.
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Summary: Liberal BS
Review: I'm told earlier editions of American Pageant were pretty good, but the 12th edition is practically worthless. The preface brags about compressing the real history in this edition and expanding coverage of "immigrants, slaves, the environment and women". The text takes every oppurtunity to deride Europeans for cruelty, but when mentioning other races, no such words are attributed to them. For example, the Aztecs' human sacrifice, etc. is presented matter-of-factly. When the discovery of America is described, parentheses are placed around the word "discovery". It waxes about the authors's morals and ethics more than it does a presentation of history. In fact, several times when a massacre against Europeans is described, or the spread of native diseases to Europeans, the phrase "poetic justice" is used. I don't recommend this book unless you're interested in reading a demonization of American history and culture.
Rating: 
Summary: From the view of a high school student
Review: I am a Junior at Waterford Mott High School in Michigan. In my A.P U.S. History class this is our book. The lack of actual information in the work is spellbinding. There is more fluff inside this book than on a six foot poodle.
However interesting the height of each American President may be, is it truely necessary to know what that height is in feet as well as meters?
The book could benefit from some revision. The opinion of the author is also far too evident, Class room History is better represented in a n unbiased form, especially in an A.P. class where it is the goal for the students to form their on opionions on historical events and their causes. Bold words and a glossary would also be useful to students, for it is quite the challenge pulling fact out of fluff.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect for Advenced High School Students
Review: The American Pageant. I have such fond memories of AP American History where the lively and insightful prose of Bailey and others made history at once acessible and fun for interested and devoted students of American history. Bailey often uses metaphor to enter history and this is at once a great strength and sometimes a bit of a humorous weakness. Another reviewer shares my sentiments about the need for a history that is not at once a "ra-ra Traditional let's go America!" history that so plauged the teaching of history in high school and also the plain revulsion at the agenda drenched and boringly liberal Zinn's "People's History" Bailey interjects insightful phrases like America's new "coca-colinizing" of the world in modern times but saves his use of language not only for acerbic wit but also for praiseworthy figures.
This history really is perfect for high school students who are at once not historians but looking for a beginner to moderately advanced study in American history. This history is the perfect read along with your currect AP textbook or serves as a great textbook itself- combining the perfect mix of social, military and political history. I found that a particularly strong section of the book came in the chapters covering changing social and political landsacapes during the time period the covering the administrations from Harding through Rosevelt and up to WWII. Other strong sections were those on the New Immigration and on the Gilded Age. I highly recommend this history.
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