History in the Making
An Absorbing Look at How American History Has Changed in the Telling over the Last 200 Years
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
The popular, “thought-provoking study” that explores how contemporary prejudices change the way each generation looks at the nation’s past (Library Journal).
Historian Kyle Ward, the acclaimed co-author of History Lessons, offers another fascinating look at the biases inherent in the way we think about, write about, and teach our own history. Juxtaposing passages from US history textbooks of different eras, History in the Making provides new perspectives on familiar historical events, and sheds light on the ways they have been represented over generations.
Covering subjects that span two hundred years, from Columbus’s arrival to the Boston Massacre, from women’s suffrage to Japanese internment, History in the Making exposes the changing values, priorities, and points of view that have framed—and reframed—our past.
“Interesting and useful . . . convincingly illustrates how texts change as social and political attitudes evolve.” —Booklist
“Students, teachers, and general readers will learn more about the past from these passages than from any single work, however current, that purports to monopolize the truth.” —Ray Raphael, author of Founding Myths
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
For this fascinating history of history, author and professor Ward (History Lessons) examined scores of textbooks published between 1794 and 1999 to see how the same American historical periods, events or figures have been portrayed at different times throughout the nation's past, uncovering startling discrepancies in writers' versions of everything from slavery to Vietnam. Ward prefaces each chapter, broken down by event ("The Boston Massacre," "Witchcraft in the Colonies," "The Trail of Tears," "McCarthyism") with a summary of how a particular incident has been retold over the years. He then provides excerpts from a variety of texts, each with a scene-setting description that helps put the selection into context for present-day readers. In many cases, shifting biases, politics and cultural preferences (loaded with stereotypes and insensitive depictions of ethnic groups) have altered history's presentation over time, as later texts tend to prove earlier writings overly embellished or outright false. It's all enough to lead history buffs to ponder not only how history will treat, say, the Bush administration 50 years from now, but also whether they can actually believe what they read. Readers who found the similar (but far narrower) Lies My Teacher Told Me a sobering look at the shortcomings of American history books will come away even more disconcerted here.
