The book explores tons of fascinating topics about American History that don't often get covered because they don't fit in to a vision of America in which our founders were purely heroic and our nation moved ever forward in to progress. The truth is that life is messy. People, even great people, can do terrible things, or even just have a perspective that today would be foreign to us. The book urges for our history courses to teach this messiness and teach that there are unknowns and different perspectives. I've always loved history and that's because I've always seen it as a series of interconnected stories. But I think Loeswen is right that that is not how it typically taught. It's taught as a series of disconnected facts that are to be memorized. And that is a pity.
One of the insights he provided that I had no idea about is that when the pilgrims first settled, they weren't moving in to empty land. I mean, I knew there had been Indians but I assumed they were nomadic and weren't currently in the area the Pilgrims settled. Untrue! The Pilgrims moved in to already built towns with homes and crops that were growing. Via traders, European plagues had decimated the Indians living there to the point that the handful of survivors had abandoned the town for another village. Further, the people on the Mayflower chose that area for that exact purpose. I think that is beyond amazing because it's undisputed fact but even with a degree in history, I never learned it. And the consequence is a distortion. It allows us to think of the Indians as being less "civilized" than they really were and allows us to not dwell on the genocide that happened to the Indians (initially through complete accident).
Another example that I thought was interesting was the War of 1812. When I took AP American History in high school, I absorbed it. And I remember distinctly finding the War of 1812 perplexing. We were taught that it was caused by British sailors taking American sailors, trade issues, and a desire to expand territory (I assumed by taking British land). It just seemed off that Britain would take American sailors and that America would fight a war for British land without the Brits in the land supporting it. Here, I found the missing puzzle piece. Britain had mutual protection treaties with many Indian tribes in the Americas. The US could not expand to the West as much as they wanted to without causing war with Indian tribes that would in turn cause war with Britain. So they precipitated war and went to it. The result of the war was that Britain no longer signed mutual protection treaties with the Indians and the US expanded West. I certainly don't fault my high school history teacher for this, he was amazing and can't be expected to know every detail of everything that is commonly not taught. But this detail took a story that had been somewhat boring to me and made it interesting simply by making it coherent.
There are tons and tons more of enlightening examples that this book offers that are just eye opening. It reminded me of one class I took in college that really altered my perception on politics. It was called US Relations with Latin America. It was astounding to me how racist our politics had been and how easily we went to war for our own gain- especially wars fought largely for corporations. And just how many times we'd invaded Latin American countries! Something rarely covered. When taking the class, I resisted the message. Our teacher was quite liberal and at the time I was not. I remember wanting to see it primarily as racism we've gotten over and that while there may have been some wars that were indisputably fought for corporations, that time was behind us. We'd also learned from our rabid-anticommunism and that wouldn't happen again either. I had so internalized the message of progress that we're all taught, that it was hard for me to see what the teacher was trying to get at- that we need to be sure we don't do it again. But with time, the messages of that class sunk in. The issues that led to those wars were human issues of fallibility that could and do happen repeatedly. American society may improve in some respects and get worse in some respects at the same time. If we believe in continuous progress, it leads to laziness- because we know we're good and so what we're doing now must be good too. The point of teaching the underbelly of American history isn't to shame our past, it's to genuinely learn from it and try to make a better future.
I really enjoyed the majority of the book and highly recommend it. That said, I'd probably suggest stopping somewhere around Chapter 8 or possibly up to 10. The author has an ax to grind, and while you catch hints of it throughout, the first seven chapters are so rooted in well-supported fact, that it doesn't come across as extremely partisan, biased ranting. That's not so true of the last few chapters. The last few chapter do have some value, but they're a different book. And with the book being intimidatingly long, I think chopping down the book makes it more manageable.
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