The good and the bad of this book: first off is the title: "The Intellectual Devotional..." calls out to any reader who seeks more from his reads than the elementary few moments of entertainment. Being entertained by a well-written story is good. Such stirs the imagination which exercises the mind. However, being challenged with something 'intellectual' also enriches the soul. You learn something you did not know, or prior knowledge is reinforced with a refresher course. This is the reason I was personally drawn to this book.
It is what it says it is - a devotional: 365 selected readings a person can carry over the course of a year. Its subject matter covers what it says it does - American history. What person who loves their country does not seek to learn more about it - and how it became the country that they love?
Open the pages of this book and your mind will be challenged, and you will learn more of the land you love - people, and events, and facts, and figures you may not have known beforehand.
The 'bad' of the book - and it's difficult to categorize anything of this book as technically 'bad' - is the odd blandness that permeates. It is as if one were reading an encyclopedia, at points, as stories are presented with such an utter detachment one would swear the authors either knew nothing of the American experience, composing the book from mere research alone, or this effort emerged out of a dull nighttime news cast where nothing was bad, nothing was good, all merely was.
But then again, perhaps such was the original intent. This is the 'intellectual' devotional - not the 'spiritual' devotional to American History. It offers the cerebral approach to the events that made America a country - out of all the countries of the world. If one seeks the heart of America, what unified all those differing viewpoints of the past - and even today - look elsewhere.
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