"What I then saw and heard of contemporary America so fascinated me that—believing as I do that the key to every people is in its past—I could not rest until I had mastered all that I could of the history of my delightful hosts. This I sought as much as possible from the original sources, reading voraciously, and at the time merely for my pleasure, such records as I could get of old debates and of the speech and correspondence of the dead." "History of the United States" by Cecil Chesterton is an easy-to-read synopsis of US history from the perspective of a British scholar. This is History at it's best.
