How Much Research Did You Have to Do to Get to Know the History of America?

How much research did you have to do into american political history? I definitely did not already know all of it. i've always been obsessed with the period that really begins with eisenhauer's speech about the rise of the military industrial complex, because that's part of how we economically got from there to here. And this book is truly rolling in history and detail and crazy, crazy facts at you just think that couldn't be real, but it is.