History Lessons: How Textbooks from Around the World Portray U.S. History FROM THE PUBLISHER
In an Alternative and Eye-Opening version of American history, History Lessons provides an enormous range of conflicting takes on seemingly straightforward events. Readers accustomed to a single view of American history will find British and Canadian, and American Indian, views of the War of 1812; Cuban and Russian views of the Cuban Missile Crisis; and Iranian views of the Iranian hostage crisis, among various other astonishing and enlightening examples. Many of the textbooks included in History Lessons are the only authorized source of information about American history in their respective countries. They are made accessible to American readers for the first time, and several - including excerpts from the only textbook known to have been smuggled out of North Korea - are highly controversial. History Lessons offers a lighthearted and engaging challenge to the biases we bring to our understanding of American history - and a sobering glimpse into how the rest of the world views the past we take for granted.
FROM THE CRITICS
Daniel Swift - The New York Times
These may be conspiracy theories, or they may hold some traces of truth. But either way, neither History Lessons nor the United States can afford to dismiss the ways the rest of the world sees America, and how America is represented to young people in schools.
Library Journal
Textbooks are political documents, commissioned methods for molding students' viewpoints as well as instruments for conveying essential facts. By compiling excerpts of secondary-school manuals from largely Anglophone although not exclusively European sources, Ward (history, Vincennes Univ.) and Lindaman (a doctoral candidate at Harvard) provide a valuable service for those largely familiar with U.S. texts only. The use of post-Soviet Russian sources as well as Cuban and North Korean works is especially revealing. After an introduction delineating national differences among foreign publishers and the caveat that "most languages have passive constructions that allow them to speak of something without assigning blame," the authors submit selected historical passages ranging chronologically from the European discovery of the "New World" to the post-Cold War era. The book clearly shows that the United States developed within a global context and that U.S. history was especially intricately intertwined with that of its hemispheric neighbors. That said, there are few new insights for most well-read historians. All the texts assessed are from 1988 through 2001, which necessarily sets this work in time; it would be enlightening to see a similar study done ten years hence. Recommended for public libraries and teachers' college collections.-Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Library of Congress Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
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