Customer Reviews: Read 37 more reviews...
 It is good for a basic overview.... December 28, 2008
I was looking for something a little more in debt so we kind of flew through this book and it didn't keep my sons attention as I had hoped.
But it is good and there is nothing wrong with it. The only complaint I can see is for those who want to discount God and the reasons why we really came here to America.
I personally just wish it was more in debt. Very simple.
 Revised version coming October 28, 2008
What if God treated whole countries corporately they way He treated individuals? What if He had a purpose and plan for America, the way He has a purpose and plan for you and for me?
That's the premise of a terrific series of books by the Rev. Peter Marshall, son of the famed U.S. Senate chaplain, and his co-author David Manuel. Together they wrote The Light and The Glory, From Sea To Shining Sea, and Sounding Forth the Trumpet.
In the first volume, The Light and The Glory, Marshall and Manuel open their survey of American history by tracing its roots back to the earliest European explorers. The traditional school textbook notes that Columbus was looking for a shorter route to the Indies and stumbled upon America by accident. Marshall and Manuel tell a different story:
In his personal journal, Christopher Columbus described an incident which took place on his fourth and final voyage. Sick with fever, and in the depths of despair, he had a dream in which a stern voice strongly rebuked him. The voice reminded him that God had singled him out to bear the Light of Christ to a new world, had given him all that he had asked for, and was recording in heaven every event of his life.
According to Peter Marshall's Web site, a new revised and updated version of The Light and The Glory is due in Spring 2009.
The Light and the Glory September 9, 2008
Peter Marshall has done a lot of good research into this book about America before the Civil War. It is informative as well as "entertaining" in that it is well-written and flows smoothly. My husband has enjoyed reading it and is talking to everyone about it.
The book arrived quickly and is in beautiful shape.
A unique perspective on America's spiritual roots. April 21, 2008
This volume of early American history is limited in its scope, covering a period of about 300 years from Columbus through the colonial era, the Revolution, and the Washington presidency. Its purpose, however, is not merely to chronologize these events, but to examine them from a spiritual perspective. Peter Marshall and David Manuel, both Yale alumni, seek to discover our country's earliest spiritual heritage and how it relates to the moral and cultural degeneration they were observing in 1977, and that continues today. While the book is not without its flaws, I think it offers a critically important and often purposefully omitted piece of the historical puzzle regarding the roots of America.
The authors begin with Columbus, whose early missionary ardor to bear the light of Christ to the New World was ultimately corrupted by the powerful lures of wealth, prestige and power. Next come fairly detailed examinations of the colonies at Jamestown, Plymouth, Salem and Boston. Of particular emphasis, again, were the spiritual actors, such as the Franciscans, Jesuits, Pilgrims and Puritans. Throughout, the authors provide a quite unvarnished look at the shortcomings of all of these personalities, but also strip away the false images and caricatures of them that are so prevalent in modern scholarship. In particular, they restore some desperately needed balance to the discussion of the Pilgrims and Puritans.
The thing that gives this book such strong credibility, as with any good history, is the authors' heavy reliance on primary sources, particularly from Columbus, Bradford, the Mathers, Winthrop, Washington, Adams and many others. Their own writings reveal much about the deep Christian faith of our country's founders, much that is never mentioned or even considered a valid topic of discussion in most modern (i.e., revisionistic) history books. Over and over, the hand of God's providence is highlighted, whether in the survival of the early colonies, or the war for independence, or the unlikely success of the Constitutional Convention.
My key criticism of the book, however, is the extent to which the authors presume to tell us what the will of God was or was not in various situations. In so doing, they depart from the demands of the documentary evidence, and thus take what are, in my opinion, speculative leaps that are impermissible for historians. I understand the authors' tendency to surmise such things from surrounding circumstances, but just as I found this kind of speculation to be objectionable in the work of Will Durant, that is equally true here.
Still, this history was written by Christians for Christians, and the authors make no bones about that. As a result, they are prone to occasionally slip into sermonizing as they consider spiritual parallels between conditions in the 17th and 20th centuries. The book also ends with a call to national repentence and a reestablishment of the Covenant Way that marked the lives of the first colonials. As a committed Christian, I am comfortable with this perspective because all knowledge is God's knowledge and may be fairly integrated in this way. Secularists, however, will likely find this aspect of the book distracting. Nevertheless, the value of this book for filling in an important gap in most people's historical knowledge cannot be overstated.
An amazingly well-researched book November 11, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book details how to achieve great things by serving God first. It shows us what we must do to get our country back on the track of democracy. Even though it seems like we have completely lost our way, all we have to do is turn whole-heartedly to God and ask for His help. The story of how our forefathers did this is wonderful and inspiring.
|
