History in the Making: An Absorbing Look at How American History Has Changed in the Telling over the Last 200 Years [Hardcover]

Kyle Roy Ward (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1595580441 | ISBN-13: 978-1595580443 | Publication Date: October 1, 2006 | Edition: 1st ed

From the widely acclaimed co-author of History Lessons, an examination of how the way we tell the story of our country has changed over time.

In this absorbing look at how the telling of American history has changed over the past three hundred years, historian Kyle Ward juxtaposes excerpts from U.S. history textbooks of different eras to compare how the same event or historical figure has been portrayed differently at different times in our nation's history.

From the Boston Massacre to antebellum slavery, the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor to the stock market crash of 1929, Ward uncovers unexpected and often dramatic shifts of interpretation corresponding to prevailing attitudes at the time each textbook was written. History in the Making is the history of history—a stark reminder that even history itself changes over time.

For anyone whose view of history was turned on its ear by James Loewen's bestselling Lies My Teacher Told Me, here is striking, firsthand evidence of the shifting biases, politics, and cultural preferences in both our understanding of our own history and in what we teach our children about the past.

Editorial Reviews

From 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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Even when historians strive mightily to remain objective, their biases inevitably are reflected in their writings. Ward is an assistant professor of history and political science at Vincennes University, and he has also taught history at the high-school level. In examining excerpts from general U.S. history textbooks written over the past two centuries, he convincingly illustrates how these texts change as social and political attitudes evolve. In an early-nineteenth-century text, Native Americans are portrayed as treacherous savages. By the turn of the century, they have become the disappearing "noble savage." By the late twentieth century, the emphasis is on the victimization of Native Americans while showing respect for their diverse cultures. A few years after the Monroe Doctrine was proclaimed, texts stressed its opposition to European colonialism.But a current text views the doctrine as an example of America's emerging imperial ambitions. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 374 pages
• Publisher: New Press, The; 1st ed edition (October 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1595580441
• ISBN-13: 978-1595580443
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,085,809 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kyle Ward is the Director of Social Studies Education at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. Over the past twenty years, he has worked as both a high school social studies teacher and a professor of history and social studies methods at the university level. The co-author (with Dana Lindaman) of History Lessons and the author of In the Shadow of Glory, History in the Making and The Pacific War and History Textbooks, he lives in Sartell, Minnesota.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Looking at History through Multiple Perspectives, October 26, 2006

By 

Gerard D. Launay (Berkeley, California) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: History in the Making: An Absorbing Look at How American History Has Changed in the Telling over the Last 200 Years (Hardcover)

I love this book because it shows history is written to satisfy a particular audience. Collecting textbook accounts over two hundred years, we witness how the "story" of an event changes as America grows and learns. BUT...this does not mean that the current story is the best by any means. For example, I thought that the most objective description of the "Boston Massacre" was in the 1880's. The textbook then provided a fair picture of the mob that pressed upon the British troops and dared them to fire. Today, the story is given as an example of spin, but earlier accounts did explain why the British fired on the American patriots. Other examples: even today, a fair assessment of Brigham Young and Joseph Smith - the founding fathers of Mormonism - is totally absent from textbooks. Little is discussed how Joseph Smith forged money, committed perjury, and provoked the communities in which he lived. It is interesting that the earliest textbooks criticized his religious doctrine as absurd as opposed to criticising his actual conduct. Or take the story of the "Trail of Tears." It was interesting to note that most textbooks, even the early ones, argued that the Native Americans were treated badly by President Andrew Jackson, but only recent ones actually depicted the shocking physical suffering in the forced relocation. (Some old textbooks talked about the Red Men, which is
politically incorrect today).

In a nutshell, we are reminded of Oscar Wilde's witicism: The proper occupation of the historian is to accurately describe what never happened. I strongly recommend this book, as well as Kyle Ward's earlier book on history, as ESSENTIALS for any high school student.

22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars No analysis, no gain!, December 20, 2006

By 

J. Geske (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: History in the Making: An Absorbing Look at How American History Has Changed in the Telling over the Last 200 Years (Hardcover)

I definitely wouldn't give this book such flowing reviews as the others have. I felt that this book was, overall, choppy and pretty lackluster in parts. Before I began reading the book, I thought it would provide an in-depth look at the genesis of how a particular subject in American history was told through the prism of then-present sentiments. It hardly did that. The manner in which the book is set up is this: a 3-line intro and then a half to two-page selection from a textbook from (for example) 1830, 1879, 1934 and 1975. There was absolutely NO analysis or commentary, sauf some small intro (which barely sufficed). Literally, it was, "Oh, well, in 1958, this is how textbooks portrayed McCarthy! They didn't like him, look at the words they use!" Huh? Why did they use those words? For how long did they use those words? Did this affect the attitudes of children? Why using those words change in the 1970s? Was this a broader change of feelings, or specific? etc etc I felt that the author did not think his reader could handle chapters that went uninterrupted for more than, gasp, 3 pages. It was almost like "The Da Vinci Code" with those 2-page chapters to make yourself feel like you've been reading a lot. "Look, Ma, I'm on chapter 93 and I've been reading for only 45 minutes!"

Overall, I felt letdown by the author, if I can even call him that, more, the "researcher." This book is heavily researched and, obviously, cited, using textbooks throughout history. However, this book *read* like a textbook instead of a journey/story through time. It was minced up and hand fed to the reader in little packages representing how textbooks felt about a subject as though the reader can't handle prose. There was no actual authorship in this book, and that was a problem, continuity-wise. The introduction was the only part he wrote, honestly. I'm not completely faulting the author for that, though, because that's the way in which he structured his book, but it does neither his name nor the topics any justice.

And one minor issue that lingered in my head was his selection of books. He never remarked on the readership or level of use of the books he used, or their distribution (among other things he did not mention...). His sample - were they the most-published, highest-read books in the country? or fringe, biased textbooks read only in Alabama? He talks about how history can change or perhaps be manipulated...and he could have very well done the same thing and present what he feels about a subject vis-a-vis his selection of works. I'm not saying he did, and I do not believe he did so, however he could have AT LEAST remarked on some aspects of the books, instead of just giving us huge passages and a less-than-meaningful bibliography.

Eh, as a history lover, I'm unenthousiastic about this book. It is a very interesting and important topic, however, for a book that actually proves the thesis that history changes which is supported by *analysis*, I'd look elsewhere.

Two stars.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating concept, poor execution, July 20, 2007

By 

almitchell "alex_says" (Roswell, GA USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: History in the Making: An Absorbing Look at How American History Has Changed in the Telling over the Last 200 Years (Hardcover)

I was very excited about this book, because I thought it would be more of a presentation of the revisionism of our history that we're teaching our kids. It is, in a way, but instead, it is very boring, very uninteresting, and a very uneven collection of snippets from various texts. Even the headers for each section are uninteresting. Someone somewhere might enjoy it, but I can't even work up the enthusiasm to finish it.