Like its corresponding full-size version, The Enduring Vision, Concise, features an engaging, elegantly written narrative that emphasizes political, social, and cultural history within a chronological framework. The Enduring Vision was the first U.S. history survey text to incorporate sustained attention to cultural history, and is also known for its innovative coverage of the West and the environment.

The inside of the book is quite colorful and easy to read. The layout was well thought through and contains well laid-out information on a broad variety of subjects. As a general reader, I found it quite good in most areas of history. The only part of this history I found lacking was in the more controversial areas, where only one viewpoint was offered and seemed to be the only one accepted.

As the book gets to more modern history, the reader is left no doubt that Reagan was an evil and deceptive man, and Clinton was the saviour of the US people. While some agree with this viewpoint, the authors only present this viewpoint and none other. A look into the author's backgrounds should provide any objective reader information on where the authors were coming from and why they feel this way. I personally like seeing different views of history, and to do this I recommend buying the accompanying document sets and essay sets - they contain different analysis.

This book does present some historical events from both sides, however it too often represents a one sided opinion or presents only half of the story. Even though the reason could be it is a condensed history, it is an unfortunate possibility that certain information was left out in the interest of bias.

As a teacher I had once said, you pay your money and pick your views... there are many different interpretations of the same information in history. I prefer seeing more than one viewpoint in a general history reader.