This is the middle volume in a middlebrow account of the 1800s, written for the 1900s, and foreshadowing those glossy Time-Life productions we all know so well a century later. Edwin Emerson Jr. is an amateur historian whose qualifications consist of having paid up his dues to two historical associations and a museum. He writes conventional history for his time, in which (for example) the phrase "history of Africa" is understood to mean "history of white men in Africa." This is histoire événementielle on steroids, as incurious and certain as bad journalism. For a trained historian it's a guilty pleasure, something like pulp fiction to a literature professor. As I'm also reading a 19th-century diary, the book might even be useful in reminding me of some of the fleeting "big events" of the period.