This is an interesting, very detailed look at history through the stories of a single family. I enjoyed this book but at times, it felt very slow and a bit too easy to get bogged down in, especially in the earlier chapters. In the beginning, I found myself returning to the synopsis to remind myself what, exactly the goal of the book was, as sometimes that was not clear. I do have fellow readers, American history aficionados, who will love this book for all the reasons it challenged me, and I will absolutely be recommending it to them.

Before reading American Bloods, I had never heard of the eponymous family. But I devoured this book and then felt betrayed by the forces of American history that I had never learned this story before. Kaag does a wonderful job writing a very intimate history; his serendipitous discovery makes the story the stuff of Hollywood scripts. The book made me meditate a bit on the impact of families and their significance over generations. What have my ancestors accomplished that has been lost to history?

If you're reading because you're into American history, then I recommend you skim through the sections on British history, you can easily pick up the main ideas of the story in the subsequent chapters.

So many stories are connected to the Bloods, and I feel that Kaag could have made this book into a multi-volume work. However, there is strength in not doing so, for it helps us continue to wonder and consider the gaps in our knowledge