Don't Know Much About American History by Kenneth C. Davis is a book that I believe is meant for adults who want to refresh their memories on what they learned about American history in high school in college. After all, since my parents got out of college I feel as though the text books have changed a lot or they've a least gotten  newer, updated ones. And ironic as it sounds history changes everyday...

Anyways, each chapter of the book deals with a certain era, for example, the first is explorers and first settlements. So it deals with who discovered America? How did the Indians get here? Why is America named America? What about Pocohantas and James Smith? What happened to the Lost Colony? etc.

Davis is very matter-of-fact in his writing and he's always quick to take a bite at any inaccuracy that history books, or stereotypes have stayed true to for years. For example, the big deal about Colombus, who necessarily didn't "discover" the Americas. Who really did is under debate, but, we know for sure that people were definitely here before Colombus, the Vikings and even maybe the Chinese.

One thing that Davis said that I took note of was, "Winners write the history books..." which is the reason why he claims that we hear so much about the English colonization, settlement and discovery of the United States mainland. People like de Soto, Ponce de Leon etc. from Spain could consider themselves played down as soon as Queen Elizabeth's "sea dogs" like Francis Drake. Which relates to the Queen Elizabeth biography that I read at the beginning of the year.

Things that stand out so far:
> Universities were founded in Lima, Peru and Mexico City, Mexico in 1551 (almost 100 years before Harvard)
> The Algonquian Indians inhabited the area of Virginia along with Powhatan and Pocahontas. The name of that tribe just reminded me of the Algonquin Hotel in NYC which reminded of me of the Algonquin Round Table in the early 1900s.