Instruct: Classify Amazon reviews into positive or negative sentiment
Query: Tendentious and scattered

I am an academic, but US history is not my field. I wanted to read a good general history of the US from the end of reconstruction to the end of WWI and so I picked up this book. I can't say I much cared for it. It is hard to turn issues like bimetalism and greenbackism into a compelling story, so it is not surprising that Painter falls short. But his obviously leftist account struck me as too biased -- despite the fact that I share his political beliefs. The book attempts to cover a little bit of everything that happened in this period, but ends up feeling more scattered than comprehensive, with very brief one and two page sections on various subjects crowded together in chapters with very little to hold them together. The prose is clear and readable, but hardly elegant and engaging. If you want an engaging general history of this period, I would advise you to look elsewhere.