The USA history for a complete beginner? | AskHistorians Archive Observer

I know you're asking for 1 book, but I'm going to give 2 since the first has a major flaw. I'd encourage you to read them together and I'll explain why. If you don't want to do two, start with the second- it is worth it. I'll also add a couple others that are surveys of certain periods since there's a reading list I'd give to study US history.

First, I recommend that read These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore. Its one of the few readable surveys of all US history from colonization to the 21st century. At the core of the book, Lepore argues that American history is a battle over determining the truths of the nation, from "We hold these truths to be self-evident etc..." The entirely of American history is building up to the definition of and then the expansion of what the United States means and determining who is involved, how do we determine truths, and what events reshaped their meaning. Each chapter is thematic as they move forward in chronology but maintain threads like changes in technology and communication. On the notion of truth, Lepore brings in examples like Orson Welles's The War of the Worlds to discuss how people struggle to determine truth as the modern world presents new impediments or unexpected hurdles. You can also mine the footnotes for expanding on certain themes- like Lepore's emphasis on polling and how creating an average American redefined truth based on a majority sentiment.

The book doesn't include everything since Lepore has page limits, however, a lot of historians have criticized that in her editorial discretion, Lepore leaves out Indigenous American history almost entirely. There are fleeting moments where Native American figures appear, but by the modern US section, its a very noticeable absence. This history is too important to miss, so I recommend following along with the collections of essays in Why You Can't Teach United States History without American Indians edited by Susan Sleeper-Smith, Juliana Barr, Jean M. O'Brien, Nancy Shoemaker, and Scott Manning Stevens. This collection has 19 essays by a phenomenal group of historians, and if you aren't well aware of this history, these essays are a wake up call to the absence of Indigenous people in history. It talks about how Indigenous women dictated demands in the cloth trade (normally called the fur trade, but Sleeper-Smith's work will convince you otherwise). There's a great essay on how cities in modern America grew, but following the powerlines takes you to powerplants on Indigenous land. Another important essay talks about enslavement and how Indigenous slavery is a crucial factor left out of the story.

For other books, here's a list of some survey books about specific periods/themes rather than all US history:

-American Colonies: The Settling of North America by Alan Taylor

-Before the Revolution: America's Ancient Pasts by Daniel K. Richter

-The Red Atlantic: American Indigenes and the Making of the Modern World, 1000-1927 by Jace Weaver

-Memory Lands: King Philip's War and the Place of Violence in the Northeast by Christine M. DeLucia

-Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People by Jon Butler

-Inventing Disaster: The Culture of Calamity from the Jamestown Colony to the Johnstown Flood by Cynthia A. Kierner

-The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition by Manish Sinha

-What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 by Daniel Walker Howe

-The Chance of Salvation: A History of Conversion in America by Lincoln Mullen

-A Nation without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910 by Steven Hahn

-Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory by David Blight

-The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States During Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 by Richard White

-Sex and the Constitution: Sex, Religion, and Law from America's Origins to the Twenty-First Century by Geoffrey R. Stone