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History Lessons: How Textbooks from Around the World Portray U.S. History

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In History Lessons, a philologist and a historian walk us through US history as it is presented to high school children in 28 other countries by their history textbooks. For each of 50 topics that normally appear in US junior or senior high school history books, the authors have located about a page of text from one or several foreign books that address the specified topic.

We start by learning about Viking Exploration as it is taught to children from Norway and Canada, work our way through the American Revolution as taught to the British, slavery as taught to Nigerians, World Wars I and II as taught to Germans, visit Cuba and Vietnam, and end up in the Philippines, North Korea and the Middle East, as taught to young Israelis and Saudis. But this isn?t history as Americans are taught it, the land of the free and the brave, the land of Free Trade. This is a country that is positively alien, where Americans are often the bad guys to be resisted and mistrusted. How can this be?

Those of us ? from wherever we came ? who have read the history of our countries in foreign books have passed through a series of emotions: denial, anger and (if we?re lucky) understanding. Every child everywhere in the world is taught at school that he or she comes from the most important, most heroic and most humane country in the world. Our parents and teachers said so, therefore it must be true. The difficulty comes when we leave our home country and find that others don?t have the same benign attitude to us. That is a hard enough transition for an individual. When two countries face each other, as the US and Iraq have recently, there is the potential for wholesale confusion and misunderstanding. It is incredibly hard to rethink such basic facts about our identity as those we were taught as children. It is harder still to comprehend how those foreigners could allow themselves to be cuckolded into believing such lies about us. History Lessons won?t entirely resolve this difficulty, but it does make a starting point for understanding how people worldwide can have such contradictory ideas about the ?facts? of history.

Taking 50 topics from Viking Exploration through New World Order, Dana Lindaman and Kyle Ward show how that subject is treated by one or more countries. The entire list of countries comprises Brazil, Canada, Caribbean, China, Costa Rica, Cuba, France, Germany, Great Britain, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Nigeria, N Korea, Norway, Philippines, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, S Korea, Spain, Syria, Vietnam and Zimbabwe. The authors have restricted their comments to a very short introduction to each section. This minimizes ? but does not entirely eliminate ? their own biases on the topic and lets us read the excerpts with fresh eyes, just as schoolchildren do.

Although the US is at center stage of this book, there is no suggestion that historical events involving the United States are any more prone to misreporting by foreign textbooks than are events involving any other country. Nor is there any suggestion that US textbooks are any more ? or less ? accurate than the textbooks of any other country. The authors claim that political correctness has reduced US textbooks to ?a series of inoffensive facts and figures,? but the excerpts in the book suggest that this is a worldwide failing. Few, if any, of the passages are engaging and only the Nigerian book quoted seems to assume any intelligence on the part of students.

What is not included in History Lessons is any kind of statistical analysis. The authors have not made a survey of world textbooks; they do not claim that the passages quoted are in any sense typical ? or atypical ? of their continents or political regimes. They do say that most countries have some kind of centralized control over school textbooks, so that these passages come from either the only book available to students, or at least one that meets standardized guidelines. Depressingly, nowhere in the world are children exposed to a wide variety of views. None of the statements in the books seem open to debate, even when their authors piously invite their young readers to ?discuss? the topic.

The natural readers of History Lessons are high school history teachers and teachers at schools with immigrant children. But the book will have the greatest value if we can let our children read it at an age when their minds are still open to new and diverse ideas. The aim is not to teach them that US textbooks are ?wrong?, but that we need to look elsewhere than received wisdom to find what is common to humanity.

There used to be a wonderful news magazine called Atlas that produced little of its own material, but reprinted material on a given monthly topic (nuclear power, the EU, the Middle East, free trade, etc.) from 4-6 other news and editorial sources from different regions of the world.
What was good about Atlas, and was less well done in this book was the range of perspectives. In this book there are on many of the topics only 1 or 2 other perspectives.
An example of this is the American invasion of Russia in 1918. When I took history (in the US) this was never mentioned, and most Americans are unaware of this and very incredulous about whether it happened. In this book it is covered as perceived by Japan and the UK. A total of 5 sentences between them. I would be fascinated by what was taught in Russia about this.
The book seems to avoid topics that might be upsetting to the US world view. The US CIA toppling of the the elected government in Iran in 1953 (is this mentioned in the Middle East?) or Chile in ~1970 (how was this viewed in South America?)Cuban-American relations - only the Cuban view? why not that of Mexico which would be fascinating. Sometimes the book gets in right. 5 text book views of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki including Asian and European views.
So I found this an excellent idea, but generally not executed in a strong broad and challenging way. Too much on things like the French and Indian War and not enough on the 20th century. Too few view points.

This volume sheds some interesting light on US history from countries around the world through excerpts from foreign textbooks. Its strength lays not so much in the facts that it presents, but in the perspectives. Some entries, like those from North Korea, may not provide much insight, but most show US history in a different perspective than the parochialism found in many classroom texts. Taken as a whole, the entries will introduce the reader to various ways of interpreting US history.Entries are listed chronologically, with explanations between each section/country to introduce each countries' particular relevance to the US subject being discussed. Often, the entries tell us something about these other countries, too.

This book will be of primary interest to educators and those familiar with US history. I've used this with my students and found it very helpful (even when I disagreed with the particular interpretation). On a minor note, some of the factual mistakes that have made their way into these histories is also enlightening: i.e. that John Brown was black or that US spies blew up the USS Maine.

History may be written by the winners, but that doesn't mean it's the only history that's out there. That's the premise behind "History Lessons: How Textbooks from around the World Portray U.S. History". However the only people that will run to read this book are, history teachers and history hobbyists. That's not to say it's a bad book. It is a great book, but it doesn't lend itself to be read a linier manner. It is more apt as a reference book for high school research papers on American History. The causal reader looking for a smooth mind blowing read will be bored and frustrated. The main reason that the book drags is how it's edited, there is very little writing here. Most of the passages are directly from other text books. The authors/editors do provide some brief insight before a selected passage but this is a compilation work, not a original work of non-fiction.

The idea is original however, take snippets of textbooks from around the world about American history and hold them up to what we think we know about our own nation's story. The result is like walking through a history hall of mirrors, different countries obviously have different perspectives. The main points taken away from this book are that America is still very much an isolated country in thought and that historical events happening right now make a lot more sense when you take into account other nation perspectives. That may seem obvious, but when you apply it, let's say North Korea's attempt to test nuclear missiles to it's own perspective of the Korean War ("We bent the pride of the Americans who used to boast of being the world's most powerful nation and for the first time in the history, we brought the beginning of their decay.") it seems a little more profound. Canada's view of their southern neighbor is equally surprising. Having been invaded by the U.S. several times (something hardly ever refereed to in U.S. text books), Canada, a country with less clout and a small military, has developed a "we don't support what the U.S. does privately but we go along with it publicly because we don't really have a choice" policy.

By the end of the book, most countries don't have a choice. Even the once great British Empire is lost with out American support after WWII (see the chapter on the Suez Canal). According to these other history books, the U.S. became the biggest player in the world by its geography, its luck, but mostly by its aggression. As a result there is resentment and frustration with this country. As an American reader you know there's more than just these other viewpoints, but that's, again, the point. America needs to recognize these other viewpoints. We have become too dependant on just our own.

Honestly, this book is about as interesting as reading a high school history text book from cover to cover would be.

It's a good idea, but as other reviewers have pointed out, the selections are underwhelming. The analysis of the selections is spare to say the least. The book would have been considerable better if more time was spent discussing the reasons why history was taught in such a way and the process through which the material made it into the classroom. Textbook adoption in the United States is an interesting topic, I'm sure the process in other countries is as well.

Still, the book is what it is, and it does what it says it does. I was left unimpressed with the difference in perspectives for the most part. The most outre passages were taken from North Korean textbooks, but most of those were simply examples of blatantly silly propaganda. Probably the most interesting where the selections from Arabic textbooks, as they, for the most part, represent a somewhat realistic account of history from a drastically different point of view than what an American is accustomed to.

I don't really know who this book is intended for. I'm not a history teacher, but one might find it mildly interesting. But anyone seriously interested in the subject of history or education is probably not going to be dramatically enlightened or entertained by this book.

I bought a Tee-Shirt on an Apache reservation. It had the headline "Homeland Security," then a picture of a handfull of indian warriors of the late 1800's, and finally another line of type: "Fighting Terriorism Since 1492."

This Tee-Shirt uses just a bit of humor to make us see ourselves in a quite different light. This book brilliantly takes this concept a giant step further. The authors take fifty subjects, from the Viking Exploration to The New World Order, then they print a view on this subject from other countries. For the Viking Exploration there are two other views, one from Norway, and one from Canada. On Slavery they have reports from Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Portugal, Great Britain and Mexico.

Where the report was in English it is reprinted as is. Otherwise it was translated with instructions to the translators to keep the language as close to the original as possible, in both syntax and vocabulary.

I have only one request of the authors. If there is a new revision, add religion. I suspect that the Islambic world sees us as doomed infidels, and after the recent election I suspect that Europe sees us almost as fanatically religious as they to the Islambic world.

"History Lessons" is a book that I think works better in theory than practice. In theory, yes, it seems exciting to hear what British school children are taught about the American Revolution, or what German school children are taught about World War II.

In practice, though, I found the book's selected passages to be rather standard fare. I was actually surprised at how LITTLE revisionism occurred. Most of the accounts of history were identical to the "mainstream" views one would read in the US, which perhaps shows that there is a limit to just how much bias one can get away with in this day and age. Even the few countries that were really bombastic in their rhetoric, like Iran or Cuba, for example, more or less stuck to the traditional narratives when explaining events like the Missile Crisis or the Hostage taking. The only difference would be the inclusion of terms like "pig dog American" scattered throughout. North Korea was the only country that crossed the line into outright fantasy.

If this book had been written in the 1950's I think it would have been far more interesting. We're no longer living in an era where democratic societies can get away with indoctrinating their student population with nationalistic propaganda, and as a result the stories of history have now become increasingly standardized (and thus boring) around the globe. Perhaps a more interesting book would have focused solely on how dictatorships or Communist societies present history. Instead, this book focuses too much on analyzing the perspectives of European, democratic states, and as a result actually provides very few unique insights into American history, contrary to what the grand claims on the back cover allege.

Overall, this book is impressive, but could have been so much more powerful and provocative. Instead, I feel it suffers from the case of classic, historian dryness in its writing.

Pros:
** Each chapter provides a collection of writings on a single, historical event/topic, brought together from multiple countries, and therefor multiple perspectives. You realize quite early on how terribly biased are the history books (mainly written for schools) of ALL countries.
** The book's chapters follow the history of the U.S., from founding to the present. To manage this scope, the authors, of necessity, are selective. I found the events they selected to be quite good.

Cons:
The writing is dry.

While most educated people realize that any historical account is going to have some bias, this book presents hard evidence for the extent to which history books (especially those designed for school, and including those approved by the US government for its schools), through omission and misinformation, foster nationalistic pride at the expense of truth.

I won't repeat the excellent synopsis and commentary in the review below. Instead, as a non-American living in the US, I'd like to add my thoughts on the importance of this book.
I think this textbook should be compulsory reading in all US schools, and its equivalent should be compulsory reading in all schools in all countries throughout the world. I highly recommend that parents buy it for their children.
I have a grandmother in my native country who was born in 1909. She genuinely believes that her country is the greatest in the world and that other nationalities are unfortunate and inferior. Every battle we lost is played down (after all, our enemies were evil and did not fight fair); every victory we won was the most splendid and the most deserved. We regard her with affectionate amusement; she is, after all, in the minority in my country in these modern times. Although most of my country's history textbooks are no doubt still biased to a greater or lesser extent (and I don't claim to be qualified to judge), my modern-day history teachers taught the difference between what is fact, what is opinion and what is point of view.
However, among my US peers, the ideology of blind patriotism is common. Don't US children deserve the same opportunities to understand the world beyond their doorsteps and to evaluate their history for themselves? In other countries their one-sided education is often seen as deliberate narrow-mindedness: another misconception that is only adding to the mix of problems that cause antagonism between nations.
The US is currently occupying the position of the Most Powerful Country in the World. It in particular has a responsibility to educate objectively.
Five stars are due just for conceiving of and publishing this work.

This book held so much promise but for me was a real let down. Firstly, I had hoped that there would be far more examples of international textbooks for each historical topic. For many aspects of US history there were alternate history book texts from just 2 or 3 countries. Hardly impressive. My impression is that the author simply rounded-up history books from a core of 6 or 7 major countries and then just took excerpts. It is no where close to the wide & varied study I was expecting. In addition to the lack of true variety and comparison, the book is also very dry reading, even for a history lover. I would not suggest this book to anyone. It promises a colorful and exciting look at how nations observe and teach historical events from their perspectives but really offers very few comparisons and most of those it does include are not all that provocative or insightful.