Painless American History (Barron's Painless)

Painless American History (Painless Series) ... I purchased Painless Earth Science, History, Study Techniques, Grammar, Life Science, American Government, Spelling, Pre-Algebra, & Geometry for my daughter to help prepare her for high school. She hated me for weeks, but this series has tremendously helped her with her transition from middle school to an advanced magnet academy for high school. These books are one of the best educational tools I have ever purchased. By week 2 she was excited to show me what she had learned each day. We will fortunately be using these for my son when he is old enough to use them. By the way... shipping was fast as usual with Amazon Prime. :)

Love this educational series! This will be the third one I’ve used as a study source for my boys. We’ve homeschooled for four years now, would love more instructional materials like this series.

These "Painless" books are all really good for an overview or quick review. Not totally in-depth--but great for what they are

My son is actually learning history with out crying about it.

We have the 2009 version and while I wouldn't even suggest one book could cover all of American history, this one does a nice job of giving you an outline of the basic facts without all the excessive drone of some textbooks --those that go on and on. This book is also worthwhile for most homeschoolers as well as advanced students prepping for an early college exam (CLEP or AP) and would be useful for college kids to use to bone up on just the facts. Is it everything? Of course not, but it does give you an outline to follow and a nicely designed framework to guide you. Common sense in education and learning shows that by using this as a guide, you can easily look for deeper information on the enormous amount of educational websites available--to explore any historical topic. We're using to prep for our son's CLEP exam. It is just one of the tools. Those who complain are quite foolish to think that for $10 you'll get all of American History. If concerned, I'd suggest you check it out from the library first and see which book best fits your learning needs. You can also google any facts that you doubt, but this is a simple, easy to use guide.

Can't wait to finally learn\understand what I should've figured out in high school. Whew.

This is truly an execrable book, and Barron's should be ashamed to have published it. Not only is it poorly written and misleading in some of its conclusions, it is riddled with factual errors. Some of these errors may be blamed on the confusing charts (ex: the chart on page 22 seems to indicate that the Hopi and Navajo lived in New England while the Chinook inhabited Texas and the Pequot, Mohegan, and Naragansett hung out in Florida), while others are relatively minor (ex: page 44, the lawyer in the John Peter Zenger trial was Andrew Hamilton, not Alexander Hamilton). Other "errors" can be described more accurately as "glaring misunderstandings and lapses of historical fact." My favorite of these occurs on pages 120 and 121, when the author goes on at length about how John Brown's experiences "as a slave" led him to organize the attack on the federal armory at Harper's Ferry. There is a little box with a quote from the memoirs of a Georgia slave named John Brown talking about the harsh conditions of his life before his escape. This is immediately followed by this paragraph: "John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry proved to be a catlyst for war. He was arrested, tried and hanged. When you look at the diary entry, you will see the agony that Brown went through as a slave. It is not surprising that when he escaped, he decided to lead the attack. You must take this suffering into account in deciding what you would have done if you were John Brown." Of course, John Brown was not a slave. He was a white abolitionist/violent revolutionary. Amazingly enough, there must have been more than one person named John Brown living in America in the 1850s! It really is amazing to me that Barron's, which I have generally found to be a reputable company, would let such a book carry the Barron's name into the market. I have the 1999 edition, and it is my fervent hope that there are no subsequent editions. If there are, I hope that someone has gotten around to editing the thing. The only way I could possibly recommend this book is if it were to a bored history teacher who wanted to exercise his or her red pen a little.

I am currently taking a history class in college. This book gave me a different perspective on the subject. It was the same information in my text book, only given in a different outline. Very nice book!

Everything