American History Texts Research Articles

Utah History Textbooks and Utah History

Utah History Textbooks and Utah History

Confronting Gender Imbalance in High School History Textbooks Through the C3 Framework

This study analyzed gender balance in the texts and illustrations of three recently published, high school US history textbooks and one alternate volume of American history. In all of the American history texts analyzed there were significantly more males than females in text content and illustrations. These textbooks focused on the contributions of those famous Americans who have been a part of the historical record. The record is skewed with regard to gender, leaving teachers and students with the arduous task of acknowledging the absence of women while attempting to fill in the gaps through their own research and resources. Standards committees and textbook publishers should change their focus and teachers and students should confront gender imbalance by integrating high quality women’s history resources into the classroom with web-based resources, family and community history projects, young adult literature, history textbook analysis, and the vision of the C3 Framework.

The Untold History of the United States OliverStone and PeterKuznick. New York: Gallery Books, 2012.

The Untold History of United States Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick. New York: Gallery Books, 2012.Professional historians are not likely to find much shocking in filmmaker Oliver Stone's and American University professor Peter Kuznick's The Untold History of United States. Essentially, their argument against American empire presented in book is not radically different from that of such progressive historians as Charles Beard in early twentieth century or New Left historiography influenced by work of William Appleman Williams in 1960s. And many contemporary historians generally agree with Stone and Kuznick critique of American empire. Nevertheless, general public retains allegiance to notions of an exceptional and benevolent America intent upon mission of spreading freedom, democracy, and economic prosperity to world. So much for idea that radical professors are brainwashing American youth to question concept of American hegemony. But this time, revisionist historians have a gifted filmmaker to support their case with an accompanying ten-part film series which Stone directed for Showtime cable television network.Scholars on right disagree with critique of American empire presented in The Secret History of United States, asserting that Stone and Kuznick are influenced by historical revisionism of Howard Zinn and fail to give adequate attention to crimes committed by communist dictators such as Joseph Stalin. Similar to Zinn, Stone and Kuznick do rely primarily upon secondary sources, but, unlike Zinn, they do provide endnote citations for their sources. In addition, they claim that due to rather unthinking embrace of nation's history by most Americans, who are quite aware of sins committed by Stalin, it is necessary to challenge popular complacency by concentrating upon how United States has often betrayed mission. Accordingly, Kuznick and Stone hope that their work will aid in fostering a movement of people, both in United States and world, who will no longer tolerate domination by the wealthiest, greediest, and most powerful and assist United States in regaining its democratic, egalitarian, and revolutionary soul (615).This mass movement rhetoric, however, is somewhat at odds with biographical approach taken by authors in developing their history. The Untold History of United States is hardly a comprehensive American history text. The emphasis is upon twentieth and twenty-first centuries and America's relationship with world during this time period. Thus, book begins with Spanish American War in 1898 and emergence of United States as a colonial power. Commencing with Franklin Roosevelt, Stone and Kuznick tend to tightly construct their narrative around US Presidents and how all of these leaders, some more than others, have perpetuated expansion of an American empire. This approach personalizes criticisms made by Stone and Kuznick, taking attention away from American business interests searching for cheap labor and markets.Stone and Kuznick do not simply offer villains, but they extol a hero in person of Henry A. Wallace. After serving as Secretary of Agriculture during early years of New Deal, Wallace became Vice President in 1940. Many in Democratic Party and business community, however, found Wallace to be too liberal and sympathetic to America's Soviet allies. At 1944 Democratic National Convention, Roosevelt, seeking a fourth term, was forced to drop Wallace from ticket in favor of Missouri Senator Harry Truman. Following death of Roosevelt, Truman authorized dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in addition to taking an uncompromising stance with Soviets and implementing policies such as Truman Doctrine. Stone and Kuznick speculate that Cold War with carnage and waste might have been avoided if Wallace rather than Truman had assumed Presidency in 1945. …

Representing African American Women in U.S. History Textbooks

This article addresses the dearth of African American women in high school U.S. history textbooks. The authors conducted a content analysis of the images in an African American history textbook and found that black women are underrepresented. Women are found in less than 15 percent of the images in the African American history text, while they make up nearly 30–50 percent of the images in two mainstream texts that the authors analyzed. The authors use Rachel Mattson's five heuristics to show how to incorporate images of black women in more meaningful ways in the curriculum: sourcing, inside-the-frame/outside-the-frame, intertextuality, framing historical questions, and using visual codes and conventions.

Exxon and the Control of Oil

American history texts often portray the large international oil companies as one-dimensional and unchanging agents of the dark side, exercising monopoly power here, corrupting politics there, and despoiling the environment everywhere. These companies have another important, though often-neglected dimension: they supply energy that fuels our econ omy and shapes our lives. They are hardly unchanging, having survived from the days of kerosene lamps to the days of jet airplanes by adapting their internal operations to vast changes in markets and governments. The pace of change accelerated in the last forty years, when the major oil-producing nations asserted control over their domestic reserves and created national oil companies to manage their development. A good place to start in the quest for a fuller understanding of Big Oil is the biggest of them all, Standard Oil, the predecessor of ExxonMobil. For almost 130 years, John D. Rockefeller’s company has ranked among the largest and most profitable of the major oil companies. Rockefeller left a dual legacy, making Standard Oil both the best run and the most hated oil company. Stressing the core operating principles of financial discipline, organizational innovation, and technical leadership, he created a model of efficiency that remains embedded in the corporate dna of ExxonMobil more than a century later. The behavior and the tone of his company, however, also made it an enduring symbol of cor porate excess and power. During the century since Rockefeller’s departure, the company has sought to remain true to his basic approach to internal operations while adapting to external, societal demands he did not face. 1

Alaska's place in the West: from the last frontier to the last great wilderness

From Sarah Palin's surprising rise to political stardom to recurring environmental battles over oil drilling in the arctic and public works projects like the Bridge to Nowhere, the remote state of Alaska continues to occupy center stage in the national spotlight. Yet for most Americans the history of this sparsely populated region remains a vast unknown. Roxanne Willis takes readers behind common and simplistic representations of the state to explore the rich history and extreme diversity of a land that cannot easily be pigeonholed into typical American conceptions about place. Alaska's story is usually confined to regional history books, and in many American history texts, the state simply disappears after the Klondike gold rush. Willis's book marks the first comprehensive examination of Alaskan development schemes from 1890 to the present, connecting these plans to the changing priorities of American culture and politics. She examines competing definitions of Alaska--from a Last Frontier meant to be exploited to a Last Wilderness to be protected at all costs--and explains how the contemporary Alaskan landscape is a result of this ongoing struggle to define this mythic state's place in the American West. Willis focuses on five historic battles between environmentalists and developers: the Alaska Native reindeer herding industry, the New Deal homesteader program in the Matanuska Colony, the construction of the Alaska Highway, the political dispute over the Rampart Dam, and the ongoing struggles over the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. She presents these case histories in clear language that will engage general readers while using new historical analysis that will appeal to scholars of environmental history and the American West. The result is an effective introduction to the historical origins of current political conflicts in Alaska. Transcending the typical regional histories of the state, Willis's study shows how Alaska development schemes have affected the history of American development more broadly, with conclusions that will be useful to anyone interested in environment and development issues in America or the circumpolar North--including a consideration of Alaska as the new frontier in global climate change. By showing why Alaska continues to resonate in the American imagination, Willis's book situates the forty-ninth state within the environmental movement, within the definition of the American West, and within American culture as a whole.

A Cruel Wind: Pandemic Flu in America, 1918-1920

The 1918–1919 influenza pandemic was the greatest biological disaster in American history and altered the course of world history in numerous ways. Despite these realities this pandemic has widely been ignored by general American history texts. Pettit's and Bailie's significant new work should end this historical oversight. Not only does this book present the most comprehensive technical history of this pandemic, it also details influenza's impact on World War I, the 1919 Paris peace conference, and post-World War I American life. The authors bring diverse scholarly strengths to this project. The text is based largely on Pettit's doctoral dissertation on the history of the pandemic, 1918–1920. Bailie, a Ph.D. in biochemistry, provides the basic science to explain the scientific portion of the influenza mystery. Throughout the text the authors use an impressive amount of new primary materials, including the papers and diaries of key medical, military, and governmental figures who led the efforts against this pandemic. The authors also rely on newspaper accounts from these years from such diverse newspapers as the New York Times and the North China Herald, to demonstrate the major day-to-day impact of influenza on the American public.

Encyclopedia of American Jewish history

Written by the most prominent scholars in American Jewish history, this encyclopedia illuminates the varied experiences of America's Jews and their impact on American society and culture over three and a half centuries. American Jews have profoundly shaped, and been shaped by, American culture. Yet American history texts have largely ignored the Jewish experience. The Encyclopedia of American Jewish History corrects that omission. In essays and short entries written by 125 of the world's leading scholars of American Jewish history and culture, this encyclopedia explores both religious and secular aspects of American Jewish life. It examines the European background and immigration of American Jews and their impact on the professions and academic disciplines, mass culture and the arts, literature and theater, and labor and radical movements. It explores Zionism, antisemitism, responses to the Holocaust, the branches of Judaism, and Jews' relations with other groups, including Christians, Muslims, and African Americans. The encyclopedia covers the Jewish press and education, Jewish organizations, and Jews' participation in America's wars. In two comprehensive volumes, Encyclopedia of American Jewish History makes 350 years of American Jewish experience accessible to scholars, all levels of students, and the reading public. An outstanding series of maps by Sir Martin Gilbert locates places of origin, points of embarkation, sites of pogroms, Holocaust death camps, and transport routes More than 125 photographs depict prominent individuals, Jewish neighborhoods, demonstrations, and rituals

Choosing Five Americans Who Got it Right, or History for Young Minds

Joy Hakim is the author of a popular middle school American history text, A History of US, published by Oxford University Press. It is a narrative history, presented in ten small volumes, vetted by top historians, and written to high academic standards. Hakim was also a consultant to a ten-part PBS documentary called Freedom: A History of US, which led to an excellent teachers' Web site: <http://www.pbs.org/wnet/historyofus>. She authored a book by the same name that is used as a high school history text. Her latest series, The Story of Science, is published by Smithsonian Books. Hakim was a teacher and journalist who studied elementary and middle school textbooks, found them boring, and decided to do something about it. Despite multiple rejections from textbook publishers, she held her ground on both format and substance. Then Oxford took on her cause. Her books have been best sellers ever since. We asked Joy Hakim to select five exemplary Americans, people everyone should know who have helped frame, if not shape, the identity of the nation. Here we have synthesized her responses from our correspondence and then added highlights from an interview with her (1).

Linciati: Lynchings of Italians in America (review)

Linciati:Lynchings of Italians in America Stacey Lee Donohue Unlike other European immigrants who struggled initially to become "white" in America, such as the Irish and the Jews, Italian immigrants fought a hostile reception even beyond the third generation in the U.S. Despite, or perhaps because of, the nearly quintessential American familias of the Corleones and the Sopranos, young people of Italian descent are still given affirmative action scholarships, at least in New York City, to entice them to go to college and take part in the American Dream. Although European immigrants were initially granted automatic citizenship thanks to the privileging of white skin that inspired the Naturalization Act of 1790, thus leading to the large-scale immigration of Europeans of the 19th and 20th centuries, it took Italians several generations to be perceived as entirely "white" while the Irish and Jews were essentially "white" by the second generation. Sicilian immigrants were particularly suspect: not only were they more olive-skinned then their northern European counterparts, but the timing of the arrival of the majority of Sicilian immigrants (between 1880-1921, over 4 million Italians entered the U.S.) made their initiation into the racial quagmire of the Reconstruction period in the U.S. much more rocky than other immigrant groups. Although the vast majority of lynchings targeted African Americans, and while Native Americans, Jews, Mexicans, and Chinese men were also lynched during this period, the number of Italians and the geographic range of the lynchings are astounding: there are a total of over fifty documented cases of lynchings of Italians in such places as New York, Florida, Mississippi, Arizona, Colorado, Kentucky, Chicago, Florida, and Seattle, Washington. In this powerful, and painful, documentary, director M. Heather Hartley illustrates the violent prejudice that many Italian immigrants and Italian Americans faced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The film examines the convergence of social, economic, and historical causes of the unspoken history of the lynching of Italians throughout the U.S. during this period, highlighting the most dramatic case of lynching that occurred in 1891 in New Orleans when eleven Italians were lynched by a mob. This event, which is widely known in Italy even today, is mentioned in a brief paragraph or footnote in most American history texts. With the use of archival footage with animation and audio effects added, old photographs, letters, illustrated magazines, and newspaper articles, Hartley documents how conditions in Italy [End Page 53] played a role leading up to this event: after arriving on Ellis Island, although most settled in New York and other northeastern cities, many southern Italian immigrants found their way to Louisiana where there was plantation work and where the climate was not unlike that of southern Italy. Since many Italian men planned to work in the U.S. and return to Italy to marry and raise a family, assimilation, including any desire to learn the culture, language, and racist attitudes of their temporary home country, was not a priority: Italians in late 19th century New Orleans worked alongside blacks as laborers, and the various fish and fruit stands that Italian immigrants owned sold food to blacks; white New Orleanians of a certain class responded with hostility. By the 1890s, as many as 30,000 Italians were living and working in New Orleans, and stereotypes of Italians as criminals, beggars, or organ grinders abounded in Louisiana and throughout the U.S. When a popular New Orleans police chief was assassinated, the hostility reached its apex, and Italians were blamed. There was a massive roundup of Italians after the murder, with nine Italian men eventually tried and acquitted of murder. The New Orleans Times-Democrat reported that "[t]he little jail was crowded with Sicilians whose low, receding foreheads, repulsive countenances and slovenly attire proclaimed their brutal nature." As Hartley notes, a lynching is when a mob of three or more people attack with intent to kill an accused person or group, usually of a specific race or ethnicity, in order to circumvent the legal system or under the assumption that the legal system would not provide effective retaliation. After the trial, city leaders actually advertised that...

Editorial: The Enduring Legacy of Roger Williams: Consulting America's First Separationist on Today's Pressing Church-State Controversies

Roger Williams ranks as one of America's most distinguished thinkers. Curiously, he is also among the least known. Most American history texts, if they mention him at all, note merely that he was a Puri tan preacher who came to Massachusetts from England in 1631, only to be banished four years later for his rebellious and unorthodox reli gious views. Some texts go on to identify him as the founder of the Rhode Island colony, where he lived until he died in 1683, but little else is mentioned. Williams was indeed a prominent, if somewhat controversial, Puri tan preacher, but he is best known for being the first American to ad vance the view that religion and government are separate institutions whose purposes should not be mixed. He was, in other words, America's first church-state separationist. In fact, the of separa tion metaphor, usually attributed to Thomas Jefferson in an 1802 let ter to the Danbuiy Baptist Association, was first used by Williams. In 1644, he wrote that the Bible taught there to be a hedge or of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world. Scholars are fond of stressing that Williams was concerned about protecting the church from the state, whereas Jefferson felt the wall was necessary to protect the state from the church. While this wom-out distinction is generally accurate, there were far more like nesses than differences in Williams's and Jefferson's views on church state relations. Clearly, both believed that a flexible boundary between the institutions of religion and government preserved the health and integrity of both. In its interpretations of the religion clauses of the First Amend ment, the U.S. Supreme Court frequently looks to history to ascertain

Young Oxford History of Women in the United States (review)

Reviewed by: Young Oxford History of Women in the United States April Spencer (bio) Young Oxford History of Women in the United States edited by Nancy F. Cott. New York: Oxford University Press, $242.00 / 11 vol. set, $22.00 / vol., paper. Includes The Tried and the True: Native American Women Confronting Colonization by John Demos, 1998, 111 pp.; The Colonial Mosaic: American Women 1600–1760 by Jane Kamensky, 1998, 157 pp.; The Limits of Independence: American Women 1760–1800 by Marylynn Salmon, 1998, 141 pp.; Breaking New Ground: American Women 1800–1848 by Michael Goldberg, 1998, 141 pp; An Unfinished Battle: American Women 1848–1865 by Harriet Sigerman, 1998, 143 pp.; Laborers for Liberty: American Women 1865–1890 by Harriet Sigerman, 1998, 143 pp.; New Paths to Power: American Women 1890–1920 by Karen Manners Smith, 1998, 142 pp.; From Ballots to Breadlines: American Women 1920–1940 by Sarah Jane Deutsch, 1998, 141 pp.; Pushing the Limits: American Women 1940–1961 by Elaine Tyler May, 1998, 141 pp.; The Road to Equality: American Women Since 1962 by William H. Chafe, 1998, 142 pp.; Biographical Supplement and Index by Harriet Sigerman, 1998, 221 pp. The Young Oxford History of Women is long overdue and should be in every middle and high school library. As a high school teacher of history, [End Page 207] and more specifically women’s history, I find this set refreshing and well-rounded. I frequently have witnessed gender-biased writing in textbooks and see these volumes as filling the many gaps in our current American History texts. The nine authors represented in these volumes cover the last four centuries with first-person accounts that bring women to life for the readers. The authors focus on the private as well as the public lives of women and present various groups of women from different ethnic, religious, and class perspectives. As Nancy Cott, the editor of this collection, states, “knowledge of the past is essential to creating justice for the future” (Vol. 1, 8). The books do not whitewash our history and will raise as many questions as they answer. Each of the first ten books breaks up the time periods, some as short as twenty years and others covering more than one hundred years. They also include a chronological list of events and a list of further readings relevant to that time period. The eleventh book, a biographical supplement, offers a list of women’s museums, historic sites, and web sites. This set ideally works best together, but each book can stand alone. As a history teacher, I must be capable of explaining to my students why we need to know our history. These books struggle with the same questions that students do. Why were things the way they were? How did change affect groups of people? What can we take from their struggle and use now? These books can be used by a wide range of history students—from a women’s history class to a general U.S. history class—but they also appeal to a broader audience such as English literature and psychology. They are written so that an advanced-level middle school student can benefit as well. None of the volumes contains footnotes, which makes it much easier to read. Each of the eleven volumes also contains further readings for more extensive research so that the information is appropriate to the level of the student. Another exciting feature of the series is the final volume. This biographical supplement and index directly references the ten preceding volumes. There are approximately two hundred and fifty women included, representing a variety of ethnic origins, careers, and time periods. This facilitates the set’s use in the classroom for reports as well as general reference. The biographical sketches are concise and readable. Each sketch comes with a list of further readings by and about the women. This supplement can serve as a valuable stand-alone book in classrooms. After the biographies, historic sites and museums related to women’s history—several of which relate to the biographies included—are categorized by state. Lastly, web sites are listed. Many of these sites contain similar biographical sketches for women...

The Art of the Tale: Story-telling and History Teaching

The Art of the Tale: Story-Telling and History Teaching * David M. Kennedy All good stories begin the same way: “once upon a time.” In that very first phrase of so many of the tales we all heard as children, and later re-told to our own children, we find not one but two signals of the relationship between storytelling and history teaching. One is the explicit mention of time (and the implication that the moment in question was in the past). The other is the somewhat less obvious but equally important reference to the uniqueness of the story that is being introduced in that venerably ritualized idiom: “once” upon a time, a reminder of Heraclitus’s dictum that we can never step twice into the same river, that all events are discrete, and understanding their singularity is close to the essence of the historian’s craft. There may be twice-or even thrice-told tales—indeed the re-telling, or, as we sometimes say, the re-vising, of well-established historical tales is in some ways our principal professional pursuit. But the repetition is in their telling, not their happening. And that emphasis on the telling reminds us that understanding and developing point of view, or perspective, is just as central to the historian’s art as is the establishment of empirical, factual accuracy. The storyteller, and where he or she sits, is no less important than the story itself. Allow me to re-tell one of the tales from the inventory of stories that make up my own teaching repertoire. It begins, of course, like this: once upon a time . . . there was a customer who wanted his laundry done. . . . Mine is a historical story, meaning that it concerns real people and real events. But to tell it well, I suggest, requires marrying to the techniques of the historian the techniques of the professional storytellers among us—the novelists. The great English statesman and writer, Thomas Babington Macaulay, said that “when history is properly written, there will be no need for novels.”A version of that same thought frequently enters our common speech. It usually takes the form of a comment about a work of historical scholarship that “it reads like a novel.” That remark has long intrigued me. What does it mean? It is obviously intended as a compliment paid to the particular work at hand—a book that is easy to read, fetching, appealing, a page-turner, interesting! But, by inference, that kind of remark is simultaneously intended as an indictment [End Page 462] of most specimens of historical writing for not reading like novels at all, indeed for sometimes testing the very definition of readability. The complimenter who utters that phrase, however, also implicitly presumes—and I think rightly—that there is some kind of deep affinity between novels and histories, that they may be properly assimilated to one another. Though who among us has ever heard someone make the inverse case, i.e., praising a novel for “reading like a history?” I might add (parenthetically) that the indictment of much historical writing (and teaching) for its unreadability or general inaccessibility is especially apt when it is applied to history textbooks, works that are often cast in that peculiarly repellent variant of the historian’s idiom that Frances Fitzgerald some years ago, in America Revised, called “textbook prose.” Fitzgerald did concede that there might be exceptions to the rule of “textbook prose.” As she put it: “American history texts are not . . . by their nature dull. They have achieved dullness.” What might explain that . . . achievement? And, by extension from the pages of the textbooks to what happens in our classrooms, what might explain the common reaction from students that history is a dull subject? To paraphrase Fitzgerald: history—one might well say especially American history—is not by its nature dull. By what means, therefore, has our guild contrived to give an apparently convincing impression that it is? Is there something to be learned from the nature of the novel, and the novelist’s craft, about how we might breathe more vitality and interest into our subject? Can my story of the customer’s laundry—which begins...

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong.

Winner of the 1996 American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship Americans have lost touch with their history, and in this thought-provoking book, Professor James Loewen shows why. After surveying twelve leading high school American history texts, he has concluded that one does a decent job of making history interesting or memorable. Marred by an embarrassing combination of blind patriotism, mindless optimism, sheer misinformation, and outright lies, these books omit almost all the ambiguity, passion, conflict, and drama from our past. In ten powerful chapters, Loewen reveals that: The United States dropped three times as many tons of explosives in Vietman as it dropped in all theaters of World War II, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki Ponce de Leon went to Florida mainly to capture Native Americans as slaves for Hispaniola, not to find the mythical fountain of youth Woodrow Wilson, known as a progressive leader, was in fact a white supremacist who personally vetoed a clause on racial equality in the Covenant of the League of Nations The first colony to legalize slavery was not Virginia but Massachusetts From the truth about Columbus's historic voyages to an honest evaluation of our national leaders, Loewen revives our history, restoring to it the vitality and relevance it truly possesses.

Today's Western and World Civilization College Texts: A Review

PERHAPS THE MOST widespread and influential of histories are those aimed at college freshmen: the Western or World Civilization texts.Three to four hundred thousand copies are sold yearly to mostly young students with impressionable minds. Curiously, however, these books are rarely reviewed. Consequently the harried teacher must often select texts on the basis of advertisements containing edited hyperbolic quotes from readers or users, flashy blurbs, or dust jackets devised by the publisher to promote sales. It is to these dedicated teachers that this article is principally addressed. The unsatisfactory state of the American history texts, especially in high schools and lower grades, has recently been vividly portrayed by Pulitzer Prize winner Frances Fitzgerald's America Revised (Boston, 1979). What she says about the bland uniformity, trendy revisions, and preference for standard lists of names and topics rather than for analyses applies almost as much to Western and World Civilization college texts as to the American history texts she had reviewed. Her preference for the problem approach is more suitable for the briefer, more familiar U.S. history. In addition, much of her focus is on the lobbying of pressure groups for inserting or deleting items or interpretations of interest to their sponsors. This problem hardly exists in texts about European or World History in spite of the assertions to the contrary often, if not regularly, made by Marxists. Finally, U.S. texts contain less

The Great Depression: A Textbook Case of Problems with American History Textbooks

Abstract “Soon the stock market decline would become a collapse … wipe out the speculators, stop the economy, and lead to the greatest depression in United States history.”–An American History Text (Boorstin and Kelley, 1981, p. 490) “The Depression was produced or, at the very least, made far worse by perverse monetary policies followed by the United States authorities.”–Milton Friedman (1979)

Once Upon a Time . . . . Telling Children Biographical History

ONCE UPON A TIME .... TELLING CHILDREN BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY As many philosophers of history are quick to point out, there is a good measure of subjectivity involved in recapitulating history, no matter how objective the writer may try to.be; historians, in fact, must shape amorphous data into literary narratives. If historians are storytellers, the mixture of fact and fabrication is even more integral in historical literature. Historical drama, novels, and biographies and autobiographies often serve as barometers for gauging the attitudes and values of the era in which they are produced as well as the historical one with which they deal. In this essay I want to focus on a particular subset of historical literature, biographies written for children. What especially interests me about biographies for children is the kinds of narratives produced from the historical material: they are, as a rule, more fantastic than realistic. As with other literature based on actual people and events, there are certain constraints in writing any kind of historical story for children. Major rewriting is obviously not permissible: Jefferson is a Virginian; the North won the Civil War. There is, however, a less evident consideration regarding readers' historical expectations: the prevailing opinion, which sometimes amounts to historical myth rather than fact, must be adhered to if the work is to appeal to a popular audience. It might be argued that this constraint does not pertain when the readers are children, who have not as yet fully assimilated the prevailing beliefs about even well-known historical figures and events. As Penelope Lively points out, the author who writes for children has the potential to develop historical consciousness among his or her readers. Clearly, however, history for children must meet the historical expectations of the adults -- educators, parents, librarians — who have a hand in determining which books children read. Thus we begin to see the way subjectivity enters into the presentation of historical fact. In her excellent survey of the American history texts used in public schools over the last two centuries, Frances FitzGerald chronicles the shifts in interpretive stances taken by authors of purportedly objective textbooks, stances that reflect the social attitudes and concerns of the day. They range from an emphasis on historical personages to attention to social groups to today's case studies, or "discovery" texts, that offer no definitive interpretation but ask the reader to act as historian and draw conclusions from primary and secondary evidence. Even the recorded facts have changed: Columbus has been superseded by such social reformers as Jacob Riis and William Lloyd Garrison, and once-heralded military generals have faded away as Black Americans, for example, emerge in the newer texts of the American heritage. If history textbooks are shaped according to prevailing historical interests, we can surely expect the same influences in fictionalized biographies and historical fiction for children, genres that by definition provide the opportunity for writing of a more literary nature, i.e., they are structured around character and personal conflict, not the chronology of public events. According to a survey by Judith Hoberman, American historical stories for children do follow a course dictated by public opinion. She notes, for example, the change from jingoistic biographies in the 1950' s to works in the I960' s that focus on women, minorities, and walks of life long overlooked. Hoberman also mentions the impetus to publish anything "historical" in the seventies, for history is as marketable a product in children's book publication now as it is on television and at the movies. Despite the fact that previously neglected persons and subjects have recently made their ways into historical literature for children, the change in the approach authors take toward history has not been revolutionary. It is true that, in addition to the new breadth of subject matter, recent biographies frequently treat historical lives more objectively in that dialogue is often authentic (and sometimes documented) . These works characteristically narrate a life story in just as pointed a fashion as earlier eulogistic tales of, say, the Founding Fathers of America or Britain; thus the longstanding tradition of freely interpreting history continues. Only the heroes and villains have been changed — the existence of distinctly good and distinctly evil...

New York and the Slave Trade, 1700 to 1774

4tr aditional stereotype of slave trade is that of Yankee captains /j who loaded their vessels in Boston or Newport, sailed off to Africa to LI Xdeal in human cargo, and then raced disease, malaise, and danger of mutiny to markets in plantation colonies. The slave trade as carried on by colonials is described in American history texts as of famous triangular trades, which were allegedly important sources of wealth for northern colonies. However, recent studies by James F. Shepherd and Gary M. Walton have severely shaken assumptions concerning triangular trades, and a reexamination of colonial slave trade as carried on from of leading slave ports would seem to be in order. ' Although Boston and Newport are generally reputed to have been major slaving ports in North America, New Yorkers also engaged in slaving. Edgar McManus notes that the slave trade fast became of cornerstones of New York's commercial in eighteenth century.2 That colony at close of colonial period possessed largest black population north of Maryland, and its merchants at times traded fairly extensively to Africa. Therefore, New York's customs reports and newspapers offer insights into colony's involvement in traffic, as well as into origins of its black population. Enough data exist to warrant comment on various aspects of trade. How extensive was it? Was it initiated by New York merchants? To what degree was it triangular? Did New York City serve as an entrepot from which other colonies were supplied? Was trade actually one of cornerstones of New York's commercial prosperity in this period. The answers to these and other questions provide means to test traditional views of colonial slave trade. Data for this inquiry come from three basic sources. Naval Office

Writing Thought-Provoking Test Questions

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsClair M. BowmanClair M. Bowman, Sr., is Associate Protestor of Teacher Education at Boise State University in Idaho. He is currently preparing the test questions to accompany a new American history text of which he is the co-author.

Books: Where Are the Mexican Americans? A Textbook Omission Overdue for Revision

T HE publishers' representatives had arrived early, before the opening of the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians. By the time the convention officially began, the book racks, signs, and display cases were all arranged. Each publisher, from Appleton-Century-Crofts to Yale University Press, displayed its wares in a colorful and attractive manner. Most impressive were the giants of the field, the large publishers who hire prominent historians to write textbooks for them. Like a stable of Thoroughbreds, these historians are proclaimed by their publishers as the distinguished authors of the most authoritative, readable, and comprehensive writings available for the college survey course. The professor already knows much of this, because while on the plane to the convention, he has casually thumbed through the pages of ads for survey texts in the convention program: ... it does far more than give comprehensive coverage to the material . . . . It makes the material interesting for your students to read, taking a colorful biographical approach .. Chronology charts and historical debates incorporated throughout the text further contribute to your students' learning and enjoyment. ... this exciting and definitive text presents an authoritative, vividly written account of American history from early exploration to the present. Among the topics treated in detail are: the historical and current roles of minority gioups, especially blacks .... ... Continuous and enthusiastic demand . . . necessitated a new edition of this leading American history text. Updated to include the Johnson and early Nixon years, the book vividly recreates the color and excitement of the American experience.