The first problem with this book is the biased scope of its coverage:  the title declares it to be about “History’s Most Troubled Eras,” but the other than the opening page about the middle ages, and the final page which mentions world-wide poverty and terrorism creating dangers today, every other era selected is directly tied to U.S. history, and we haven’t existed for most of history.  Even if the retitled to be about America’s most troubled eras, the selection of material is arbitrary: no mention of either of the world wars; the pages describing the dangers of exploration and colonial times don’t even mention the small pox that decimated Native American populations.  Finally, the surface level of information is so vague as to be mis-informative generalizations: it describes the cold war era as 1947-1991, and then goes on to claim that during the cold war students had nuclear raid drills, illustrated by a black-and-white photo from the 1950s.  As someone who grew up in the 1970s & 80s, I can tell you we never once had a nuclear raid drill at school.