A History of the American People (Paul Johnson)

After three years of devoted UK-centric study, I shift gears (as I shift countries) and focus on my own folk.  I've had American history in high school and college, but wanted a refresher.  I started with a very brief history book (Boyer's very short introduction; reviewed here); it was time to delve into something with more meat.  Enter Paul Johnson's A History of the American People.

I quickly realized that survey histories, done in narrative form with no pictures, graphics or maps, are not for me.  I put the book down after reading 20%.  Here are the things I didn't like:
- no pictures, graphics, or maps.  Maps especially speak volumes; I need them to aid comprehension.
- there were no chapters, just extremely long sections covering 80+ years each.  I need more frequent chapter breaks to help break up the learning around specific concepts or time periods.  One topic melded into the next- probably intentionally- but I had a hard time with that.
- Johnson's book is about 1000 pages, which gives more meat than Boyer's 140-page overview, but not enough meat for me.  Some topics were covered in-depth; others were glossed over.  That's the reality for every book of this nature, so it's not a ding on this specific edition; just on the general concept.

In the end, I've decided to approach my American history survey two ways:
1) read a few "historical atlas of the United States" books.  National Geographic, Hammond, and Rand McNally (to name a few) have produced them over the years, and I think the focus on maps/etc will help me better comprehend.
2) read the 12-volume Oxford History of the United States series (list of titles here; only 8 volumes have been published to date).  This should give me more detail on each time period, while still being considered overviews.

Some final comments: all history books have their bias; Johnson's is what I'd consider to be moderately conservative.  He's British, so he brings an outsider's perspective, which was nice.  It's not a bad book, overall; just not what I was looking for.