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Title: Hard to tell the forest from the trees
Review: While there's a lot of good details in The Era of Good Feelings, it is probably best left for the scholars and researchers. There are great details about the Treaty of Ghent, the Second Bank of the U.S., the Seminole War, Monroe's diplomacy, the Missouri Compromise, and the Presidency of J.Q. Adams. There's also a nice chapter on the first wave of the Industrial Revolution. While the Era of Good Feelings is generally associated with Monroe, this book also includes the Presidency of Adams to round out the bridge between the Treaty of Ghent and the Jacksonian Era. When Dangerfield puts the story together, however, it is not as approachable as other tales of American History. There are too many references to unexplained names and events that leave the novice historian with too much work to piece the whole story together.
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