A Little History Book Summary

A Little History of Canada by H.V. Nelles gives a concise and relatively basic view on Canadian History that would be an excellent starting point for anyone looking to learn about Canadian History. At 268 pages A Little History is short and engaging enough to keep the attention of readers who may want to gain more knowledge about the history of Canada without having to read more dry scholarly articles or long drawn out history books. This is especially important as the tone of the book suggests that it was originally intended for casual readers. The book’s main strength is how easy it is to understand and read. Nelles presents Canadian history in a way that is fresh and spikes the interest of readers of all knowledge levels.

While A little History of Canada is mainly and on the surface an informative book rather than an argumentative one, you can still see his opinions in the way that he describes some historical events and in what he chooses not to focus on in his book, for example, he spends significantly more time on the Second world war than the first world war. He lays out the book by time period, allowing the reader to see Canadian History in a linear manner that makes it significantly easier to read and comprehend. And the language used causes the reader to be able to understand confusing and layered topics with some ease. …show more content…
While he does cover some of the violence perpetrated by the colonists he does put a focus on the violence that the colonists faced. He also tends to focus significantly more on some historical events and people depending on how much he has to say about them regardless of how important they are in the scheme of Canadian History. I think these are both extremely minor issues however, and considering the vastness of the topic being covered in the book and the fact that it is written to appeal to people of all knowledge