History of the United States, Ivan Kushnir, author
This is not a book one sits down to read from cover-to-cover. It might not be a book one takes to read on a beach or a plane or for whiling away the time. The information is too intense and its appearance is formidable. The book’s title is a bit deceiving, and the book’s cover might not be that inviting. It seems meant more to attract curiosity. It is a graphic picture of the astonished Founding Fathers looking at a modern, young woman of today, with earphones, sunglasses, and in skimpy dress of shorts and a midriff top. It is intended to make people pick it up to investigate it further.
The title page, looks like a frontispiece. It is a graphic of featured people and events, an astronaut, the Statue of Liberty, Uncle Sam, a cowboy, the Wright brother’s airplane, a Native American Indian in headdress, an early automobile, a cowboy, a baseball player and more. The Table of Contents is more than 6 pages long! There is no index, sadly, for that would help if you wanted to look up something specific.
The initial page compares some events of yesterday with their modern-day counterparts. It is a foreshadowing of the rest of the book’s information and format. How do we dress today as compared to yesterday? How do we communicate? How do we travel? How do we entertain ourselves? How do we spend money? What do we like to do? What is important to different generations? How has language changed, how have words changed, how has gender changed? What are our vacation trends, how do we define sexual activity, acceptable fashion with little or no clothes, and more?
The book is very entertaining in short encounters. There is an enormous amount of information and explanation, and as a by-product, probably, there is also opinion. The pages cover different cultures, the drug epidemic for addicts and ordinary people. It covers medical advancement, America’s diversity, our cultural changes, our protests, our altered ethics, cultural mores and our approach to protests that turn issues on their heads so that terrorists are supported and victims assailed. Other subjects one ordinarily would not see covered, like the little blue pill called Viagra, and the final explanation of something called Labubu are important parts of the book, as well.
I am not part of the younger, rising generation, I had no idea what a Labubu was, and I had to look it up. It is a zoomorphic creature. (What is zoomorphic? I looked that up also. According to AI, it is a deity in animal form.) monster, meant to be playful. According to the final explanation in the book, it is meant to indicate how open-minded the Gen Z generation is, and I found that to be a bit outrageous. If anything, to me, it defines their shallowness and need for fantasy rather than reality. It defines their lack of intellectual growth and the decline of American values. If the most important thing in life morphs into figuring out ways to entertain ourselves so we can live in a fantasy world, our country and society will degrade beyond the point of no return. The real world requires much more thought and effort than the current population seems willing to give it. They seem more interested in expending all their effort on pleasuring themselves, without or without drugs, protesting causes, without or without common-sense, and they give no thought to how this opportunity to do nothing useful or productive will do anything but create chaos, the very chaos and dysfunction our society is currently witnessing.
If anything, this book enhances the message that America is no longer the great country it used to be. Our systems are failing. Our schools are failing. Our medical facilities are closing. Our citizens are becoming mindless or antagonistic. Maybe this book will, without intent, finally wake people up to the shallowness and professional agitation, sponsored by enemies of America, that is overcoming our country.
You cannot read this book from cover to cover, rather you will pick it up and read a paragraph or two or perhaps a page or two. Then you might put it down for another moment in time or day that passes when you have a few idle moments to spare. It is interesting and it might even make you smile in disbelief at some of the revelations. How have we come so far, if one can call it that, and I don’t mean that only in a positive way. We seem to have lost our collective minds.