A Century Turns by William Bennett

Before I begin my official review, I want to publicly apologize to the people at BookSneeze.  See, they sent me a copy of this book almost a year ago.  I started it about a month before the fire and I didn't finish or review it before that fateful day.  It has taken me this long to get back to it.  I am sorry.

A Century Turns: New Hopes, New Fears, by William Bennett, is a non-fiction book covering recent modern history.  Bennett covers political events from the fall of communism through the election of Barak Obama.  Each event is thoroughly discussed in context of the contemporary political climate and the influence of media coverage at the time.  A Century Turns is a follow up book to two previous modern history volumes by Bennett, America: The Last Best Hope (V.1 and V.2).

Reading this book for me was exciting and informative.  It was a totally new genre for me and I was hooked fairly quickly.  Since reading this book, I have even gone on to read a few other non-fiction histories and biographies.  Probably the most fascinating part for me was reading about some of the events that I had a vague current events awareness of as a preteen and teen (such as the first Gulf War and the Clinton Presidency).   I had never studied those periods in school because they weren't part of the history curriculum yet but they were mostly past in terms of current events. While Bennett is clear on his Republican ideology, I felt he did an excellent job of discussing the good and the bad of both conservative and liberal political happenings.

This book will be making a home on our history shelf to be looked at again when we reach Modern American History in our homeschool studies.  It most certainly qualifies as a living book and is appropriate for a high school level student.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”