SOURCE: “The Theater of Liberty,” in Washington Post Book World, March 15, 1998, p. 3.

In the following review of A History of the American People, Yardley commends Johnson's coverage of early America but strongly objects to his portrayal of American history since the 1960s. As a result, Yardley concludes that the book “is deeply disappointing.”

This massively ambitious book is the work of a distinguished British journalist who has made himself into an amateur scholar of forbidding accomplishments. Paul Johnson always aims high; his previous books include Modern Times, A History of the Jews, A History of the English People and The Quest for God, next to which the matters covered in A History of the American People seem positively modest.

The story told here is, of course, a large and great one. Johnson tells it with fluid prose, a powerful belief in the inherent goodness of the American people...