This is a great book for those who have an interest in American history. Each day Cannon provides tidbits ranging from the Pilgrims arrival to the New World up to the present day based on what event occurred on that particular day. There is some emphasis (meaning they've discussed more than once) on World War II, Abraham Lincoln/Civil War, Ronald Reagan, Elvis Presley, the Roosevelts, and the Pilgrims, but other rather obscure topics are also discussed such as the invention of the ice cream cone.

I read this cover to cover but it is really meant to be read an article a day during the course of a year. This book would make a great gift to amateur American historian.

This book is a must for the U.S. history classroom. It's a great way to start the day or make connections to a variety of important and interesting historical events throughout the year. After sharing this book, my students now constantly ask what happened today in history! It's great!

After an intriguing and thought-provoking intro, the book moves to one usually-long-forgotten historical anecdote a day, much more interesting than any one-small-page calendar. Some are more or less expected, even if the particular date wasn’t known, but the fun is in the topics that would usually have no right being in a serious history tome.
Some of my faves. . . okay, a lot of my faves:
March of Dimes (Wow!); Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer; Tokyo Rose; Lou Hoover; Edmund G Ross; Oppenheimer; Massacre on the Tuscarawas; Sherman and Johnston; Columbine; Jingle Bells; the low-altitude barrel roll in a 707; the birth of the Smiley; We Shall Overcome; Marshall wins Nobel Peace Prize; Jack Robinson and Pee Wee Reese (“someone with the guts NOT to fight back.”); Carson McCullers, Karen Blixen, and Marilyn Monroe walk into a lunch; Theodore Geisel (“He was a political cartoonist all his life, meaning he managed the difficult task of being amusing to kids and adults.”); Princess Bride (even Mark Knopfler gets a mention!); and “Surf music is just the sound of the waves being played on a guitar.”
Did not expect the author of a non-fiction history book to go meta, but in one entry he writes about Philadelphians booing their cricket team as a reason the capital was moved to DC. . . then, “Well, no, I was just seeing if you were paying attention.”

I'm a history nut so I knew this book was going to be right up my alley. Not only was it that but I actually learned quite a bit too. I thoroughly enjoyed this and would recommend it to other history lovers in a heartbeat. Entertaining, fun, and well written. 5 out of 5 stars.

From the title you might assume that Carl M. Cannon’s ‘On This Date’ is the literary equivalent of one of those ‘Today in History’ internet sites which list, in chronological order, the major events, including the births and deaths of persons of note, which happened on that day. Happily Cannon’s book is something more than an undifferentiated register of occurrences for historical trainspotters.

Instead it somewhat resembles Denis Judd’s ‘Empire’ which rather than seeking to provide a comprehensive narrative account of the British imperial experience takes a number of key events (such as the 1800 Act of Union, the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897) and then, by placing these events in context, provides an impressionistic history of the British Empire.

What Cannon offers is a mosaic of American history from the Pilgrim Fathers to the present day comprising 366 pen portraits ranging from between roughly 400 to 1,000 words apiece which are pegged to historical events on each day of a leap year, from the appearance of New York’s first female taxicab driver, Miss Wilma K. Russey, on 1 January 1915, to 31 December 1988, when Peggy Noonan was labouring on the text of Ronald Reagan’s farewell address (which was actually delivered on 11 January 1989).

In the wrong hands this format would be a recipe for dry as dust cut-and-paste history which would add up to nothing and whilst it is the case that the format is sometimes artificially constraining the fact that it is informed by Cannon’s wide frame of reference and his ambition to present a positive image of America means that it coheres more than one has any right to expect.

The book’s full subtitle is ‘From the Pilgrims to Today, Discovering America One Day At A Time’ and this is indeed a book best dipped into or read one entry per day. At the end of that process the reader will have been entertained and picked up some interesting information but whether their faith in the American dream will have been revived depends, I fear, on forces far beyond the control of Cannon’s vignettes.