William Bennett, one of the most prominent members of a group of intellectuals known as national-greatness conservatives, has seemingly set out to justify the adjective in that description with the publication of his latest book, America: The Last Best Hope.

Volume One of two, released last month, takes the reader from the discovery of America up to World War I.

Far from painting a rosy picture of America, Bennett sets out to establish that national greatness is achieved painstakingly, through trial and error, and through the vanquishing of bad ideas and corrupt men.

Bennett’s motive is made clear in his introduction: “I will not try to cover up great wrongs. … But I will not follow the fashion of some today who see America as nothing but warts.”

Indeed, as befits Bennett’s reputation, the virtues and the sins of America remain his focus and his lodestar throughout. On the first page of his first chapter, he refers to the Spaniards and Portuguese, who retained a “dread practice of the Moors” as they sought colonies in the West, “human slavery.”

In fact, an honest reckoning of America’s history of slavery and race relations permeates the book.

But Bennett also seeks to redeem Western civilization and American institutions from their critics. “One might conclude that far from being slavery’s worst practitioners, westerners led the world to end the practice,” he writes.

To those who criticize the Founding Fathers for not reading slavery out of the Constitution entirely, Bennett relies on the words of Frederick Douglass: “Now take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single proslavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.”

Similarly, to those who accuse Europeans of bringing smallpox and other disease to the New World, he points out that American Indians likely introduced syphilis to Europe.

He also takes issue with certain instances of conventional wisdom among historians, fueled by modern political correctness. Thus, he writes that the so-called “robber barons” of the late 1800s in fact “never before stooped so perfectly to serve the needs of the little guy.”

He also draws bright lines between the noble and the dastardly among public figures. Despite his own faith, Bennett has no patience for the Puritan influence in early American life, quoting Roger Williams that “forced worship stinks in God’s nostrils.”

He praises George Washington for ending a tradition on Pope’s Day, each Nov. 5, when soldiers would burn an image of the pope in effigy.

He emphasizes that Grover Cleveland’s admonition to his campaign aides to “tell the truth” led him to victory in 1884.

Bennett also seeks to rehabilitate Ulysses S. Grant, often mocked in history as a drunk, a “butcher” for his strategy during the siege of Richmond and an enabler of a corrupt presidential administration.

For all his frontier sensibilities, Bennett’s Grant comes across as honorable, measured and charitable — a sharp contrast to President Andrew Johnson, who was “vulgar, vituperative … lacking in dignity,” even racist.

Perhaps most notably, Bennett distances himself from a hero to many conservatives, John C. Calhoun. “[N]o man’s doctrines did more to put his country on the road to civil war than did those” of Calhoun, Bennett writes.

If there’s a criticism to be made here, it’s one related to the book’s grand sweep. Packing multiple centuries of American history into little more than 500 pages is a daunting task, which leads certain passages to read like a high school textbook.

In their narrower scope, recent works of popular history, from Stephen Ambrose’s Band of Brothers to David McCullough’s 1776, give characters and events room to shine, and the narrative more opportunity for novel-like flourishes. Bennett lacks this luxury.

Take his treatment of the Civil War. At a mere 70 pages from Fort Sumter to Appomattox, American history’s most tragic period, replete with colorful characters and human drama, takes on a “just the facts”-type of retelling.

By and large, Bennett refrains from making himself part of the text. One amusing exception is when he discusses President Hayes’s nomination of Theodore Roosevelt Sr. as collector of the Port of New York. After a brutal, unsuccessful confirmation, Roosevelt succumbed to cancer four months later. Bennett can’t resist adding in a footnote: “Having been through three successful confirmations of my own, I can testify that even the most routine can be a strenuous experience.”

In the very next sentence, he adds that the younger Roosevelt pursued his lifelong battle against vested interests “with a passion and a force that defied logical analysis.” Could he be thinking of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a Roosevelt admirer and an anti-special-interest crusader himself, as he wrote this?

America: The Last Best Hope is the work of a conservative to be sure, but moreover that of an intensely proud American and, most important, an honest historian.

But the eyes of Bennett’s supporters and detractors alike will most surely be on his next volume, due in 2007, when he holds forth on the ’60s, the Vietnam War and the Reagan Revolution — the latter of which he played a part in.

ABOUT THE BOOK
America: The Last Best Hope — Volume I: From the Age of Discovery to a World at War
By William J. Bennett
Nelson Current, 2006
573 pages, $29.99