Visiting Our Past: America's Historylandsby National Geographic Society
So lavishly illustrated you can use it as a coffee table book, but a lot of good history reading too. I checked it out of the library in order to build up my list of places to go sometime, which is supposed to give me hope and ambition and make the future seem possible even if not always pretty. It wasn't perfect for the purpose but it was pretty good. For me, they didn't go "off the beaten path" nearly enough.
It's limited in scope to the places where Europeans came, conquered, settled and battled. The colonies, both northeast and southwest, are well covered; as is the Lewis and Clark expedition, the western migration, and the civil war. The trail of tears warrants a single sentence, which is a shame because I'd wanted to locate some of the migration routes and walk them, if possible. But the Oregon trail is covered in great detail. A lot of places that aren't historically significant--to Americans of European ancestry--are passed by. But I'll get those elsewhere.
And the pictures--fabulous!
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