The Historian H.W. Brands

Wikipedia writes:

Henry William Brands is an American historian and author of 22 books, co-author of 2 and editor of 4, he is also a Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He graduated from Stanford University in 1975 with a B.A. in history and from Jesuit High School in Portland, Oregon. He resides in Austin, Texas. In June 2009 he and eleven other distinguished historians had dinner at the White House with President Barack Obama.

Titles of his books from 2010 back to 1988:

• American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865-1900, (2010)
• American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (2010)
• Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (2008)
• The Money Men: Capitalism, Democracy, and the Hundred Years' War Over the American Dollar (2006)
• Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times (2005)
• Lone Star Nation: The Epic Story of the Battle for Texas Independence (2004)
• Woodrow Wilson (2003)
• The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream (2002)
• The Strange Death of American Liberalism (2001)
• The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (2000)
• Masters of Enterprise: Giants of American Business from John Jacob Astor and J. P. Morgan to Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey (1999)
• What America Owes the World: The Struggle for the Soul of Foreign Policy (1998)
• TR: The Last Romantic (1997)
• The Reckless Decade: America in the 1890s (1995)
• The United States in World Affairs, 1973-1995 (1995)
• The Wages of Globalism: Lyndon Johnson and the Limits of American Power (1995)
• The United States in the World: A History of American Foreign Relations (1994)
• Into the Labyrinth: The United States and the Middle East, 1945-1993 (1994)
• The Devil We Knew: Americans and the Cold War (1993)
• Bound to Empire: The United States and the Philippines (1992)
• Inside the Cold War: Loy Henderson and the Rise of the American Empire, 1918-1961 (1991)
• India and the United States: The Cold Peace (1990)
• The Specter of Neutralism: The United States and the Emergence of the Third World, 1947-1960 (1989)
• Cold Warriors: Eisenhower's Generation and American Foreign Policy (1988)

Of his book, American Colossus, at Amazon.com one reveiwer is disappointed but writes that "Brands is skillful in his use of words, like an accomplished reporter or novelist. He is an easy read." Another writes: "...a readable but hodgepodge history." Another reports that the book is written "in a popular, narrative style with little technical discussion or statistics. Yet the book is well-informed, thorough, and balanced."

Knowing the work involved in historical research, I see the book as an amazing collection of details and well organized. Hodgepodge it is not. It's an overview that covers a lot of ground.