For instance, he explores the lives of the Englishmen whose heroic actions in the sixteenth century made settlement in the seventeenth possible. He finds their personal beliefs central to their lives, as in the case of the prototypical naval warrior Sir Francis Drake:

Most of the Elizabethan seadogs were strict Protestants, usually Calvinists, who had strong religious motives for resisting Spanish dominance on the high seas and in the western hemisphere. Drake was typical of them: his family were victims of the papist persecution under Queen Mary, and Drake had been brought up in a Thames-side hulk in consequence, educated to thump the Bible and believe in double-predestination and to proselytize among the heathen and the benighted believers in Romish superstition. He held regular services on his ships, preached sermons to his men, and tried to convert his Spanish prisoners. Next to the Bible itself, his favorite book was Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.

Johnson follows all the threads of the English colonization of North America and time and again observes the common theme of the early founders:

There can be no doubt why they went to America. Among the leading spirits, those venturing out not in the hope of a quick profit but to create something new, valuable, and durable, the overwhelming thrust was religious. But their notions of religious truth and duty did not always agree, and this had its consequences in how they set about emigrating.

In the chapters on the nineteenth century, the author quotes the brilliant French observer of the Americans, Alexis de Tocqueville, whom he claims grasped the moral content of America. He quotes with approval “that most Americans regard religion to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions” and the “fact that the government was minimal was a great source of moral strength.”

Paul Johnson takes to the “nationalist school” of interpretation of American history defined by historian Michael Lind as the belief that “all Americans, except for unacculturated immigrants and enclave minorities like the Amish and the Navajo, belong to a common extra-political cultural nation defined by language, culture, and customs.” At the heart of that culture is the Christian worldview brought from England and molded by the peculiar mix of Europeans who settled the thirteen colonies. Thus, according to Johnson, the first great American was not George Washington or Benjamin Franklin but John Winthrop, the Puritan governor of Massachusetts in the seventeenth century.

To even attempt a summary of such a magisterial tome would be foolish but for a few general observations. He views the Civil War as the “central event in American history” and attributes the dissolution of the union to disagreements over slavery, the tariff, railroad policy, and the nature of capitalism itself. He also calls the war “the most characteristic religious event in American history,” a comment rarely made by historians but one full of truth and insight, as Johnson clearly demonstrates in the text.

I believe the author’s strongest chapters are the ones on the twentieth century, the period about which he has written numerous times in articles and books. Professor Johnson even makes the important (dismal?) subject of economics intelligible and interesting. In his observations concerning the causes of the Great Depression and the American Presidents’ reaction to them seem right on the mark. His analyses of Franklin Roosevelt contrast sharply with the normal hagiography that characterizes most appraisals of FDR by American historians. He notes that FDR was a consummate and continuous liar and he strongly faults him for his moral failures and fateful errors in judgment. To site but one example, Johnson observes that “Roosevelt tended to give Stalin what he wished, thus making possible the immense satellite empire of Communist totalitarian states in eastern Europe which endured until the end of the 1980s” — not a new insight, but one which bears repeating.

There are a few factual errors, most of them forgivable given the fact that no British school he ever attended taught anything about the United States. The enormous amount of sound information is a tribute to his autodidactic genius. Professor Johnson occasionally cites the romantic peccadilloes of American presidents which, on the one hand shows their depraved character, but on the other tells us rather more than we care to know.

Historians often write within one genre of history: economic, military, political, intellectual, or cultural. Paul Johnson integrates them all and the reader will find that “his zesty, irreverent narratives teach more history to more people than all the post-modernist theorists, highbrow critics and dons put together” (Walter McDougal, Times Literary Supplement).

Reviewed by William Potter