Reception
For the most part, the publication of each volume has been greeted with laudatory reviews. Three of the volumes (McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, Kennedy's Freedom from Fear, and Howe's What Hath God Wrought) were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History upon their publication. Middlekauff's Glorious Cause and Wood's Empire of Liberty were finalists for the prize in 1982 and 2010, respectively. Patterson's Grand Expectations also received the 1997 Bancroft Prize in American history, and Kennedy's Freedom from Fear also received the 2000 Francis Parkman Prize.
When originally published in hardcover, McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom spent 16 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list, and an additional 3 months for the subsequent paperback edition.
However, in October 2006 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, the magazine's book editor, Benjamin Schwarz, condemned some of the titles in the Oxford History of the United States as "bloated and intellectually flabby." He argued that volumes 9 through 11 in the series compared unfavorably to the entries in the New Oxford History of England, maintaining that the volumes "lack the intellectual refinement, analytic sharpness, and stylistic verve" of their English counterparts. Schwarz wrote his review when only five volumes in the series were available, and he specifically exempted two (McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom and Middlekauff's Glorious Cause) from his criticisms.
Read more about this topic: Oxford History Of The United States
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