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Why American History Is Not What They Say: An Introduction to Revisionism

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I knew going in that this book would be educational and thought provoking. It turned out to be so in ways I wasn't expecting.

Subtitled "An Introduction to Revisionism," I expected this title to be almost bibliographical in certain ways, telling the reader "If you want to get the revisionist story on Pearl Harbor," for example, "read this title by Harry Elmer Barnes. For the straight dope on Abraham Lincoln, start with Thomas DiLorenzo, the follow with X and Y." And there is a little bit of that: the core of this book is author Jeff Riggenbach's walk through American history as the revisionists tell it, with emphasis not only on key revisionist historians, but also on the eras of American history that have attracted the most revisionist attention, namely the War Between the States and the two world wars.

But that's only the start.

Or, describing its physical placement in the book, that's only the middle. Riggenbach in fact starts us out, somewhat surprisingly, with a survey of the novels of Gore Vidal, making the case for Vidal as a significant revisionist historian in his own right. At first, I frankly found this a little annoying, since I don't read a lot of fiction and was in a hurry to get to the "real" historians. But the author eventually brought me around to understanding that Vidal is, if nothing else, by far the most widely read of any of the writers mentioned in this book, and therefore probably the most influential purveyor of a non-standard interpretation of American history. Fair enough. Following the survey of American history described above, Riggenbach also gave me a new respect for something I'd always assumed was leftist propaganda, Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present. Especially when contrasted, as Riggenbach does, with the neo-con A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror, Zinn now strikes me as more worth-reading than ever. The last section deals with the issue of high school and college history textbooks, and the battles over what gets presented to students as the government-approved version of what happened and why.

All of that to say, this book covers quite a bit of ground. What I was really not expecting to find in a Mises Institute book, however, was a surprisingly strong denunciation of ... of all people ... Murray Rothbard. This is the section I found most thought-provoking. For Riggenbach argues that liberalism -- "classical liberalism" or libertarianism, today -- is and has always been a phenomenon of the Left. His specific critique of Rothbard is for classifying opponents of the New Deal like Garet Garrett and Albert Jay Nock as the "Old Right," a term with real currency now in certain circles. Taxonomizing liberalism (rightly understood) as a phenomenon of the Right, Riggenbach argues, leads to all sorts of problems and misinterpretations, including confusion about who libertarians' natural allies are. This, in turn, has led to significant betrayals of core principles, like following the lead of conservatives in endorsing certain instances of aggressive interventionism. As one who has always accepted Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn's argument that free minds and free markets are characteristic of the Right (see, for example, the "What is Left?/What is Right?" chart in K-L's Leftism Revisited: From De Sade and Marx to Hitler and Pol Pot), reading that they are in fact Leftist principles takes a little getting used to. I would love to hear more discussion and debate on this point. It is not at all an irrelevant issue of "labeling," I think.

At any rate, I definitely recommend this book. It did fulfill my initial expectation of giving me a long list of authors and books to look into ... not least Gore Vidal ... although I'm glad to say most of them weren't completely unknown to me before. But I ended up taking away a lot more, besides. A definite "well done" to Jeff Riggenbach, and another hearty thanks to the Mises Institute.

Jeff Riggenbach has provided a fascinating, but in some ways quirky, survey of the revisionist movement in American history. Riggenbach does not provide either a "Readers' Digest" summary of revisionism or even an introduction to the subject. What he does provide is an outline of some of the main currents of the revisionist tradition of American history which (surprisingly) is ably summarised by the "fictional" works of Gore Vidal. Vidal, no doubt, is a serious student of revisionism. Riggenbach is a serious student of American literature so this approach is both unique and interesting. Riggenbach brings in more conventional debates over historiography, objectivity in history, the role of "historical fiction" and the "textbook wars" along the way. These diverse subjects are suitably weaved together by Riggenbach.

Riggenbach departs from this "broad brush" approach on only a few occasions. He critiques Murray Rothbard (who was both an able economist and historian) for his "Old Right" conception of the World War Two / early Cold War anti-interventionists. Riggenbach points out that there were many leftists and liberals in the usual listings of "Old Right" figures. In many ways this is "flogging a dead horse." Rothbard and fellow historian of the Old Right, one time New Leftist, Ronald Radosh, generally recognised the diverse roots of the movement, which nonetheless still had it's main political representation from the (right wing) Taft wing of the Republican Party. More useful and perceptive is Riggenbach's discussion of the Republican Party as the heir of the Whigs and Federalists, America's longest running "big government" political tradition. In contrast, it was the 19th century Democrats, or at least some wings of the party, who were perhaps the main transmission belt of classical liberalism during their day. None of this really seems to have much direct relevance to modern American politics. Riggenbach doesn't seem to consider that maybe the 20th century left has leap frogged the big government Federalist/Whig/GOP into becoming the party of "even bigger government", all on their own.

Interesting discussion.

The most comprehensive yet concise introduction to "historical revisionism" I have ever seen. Extremely well written, it should excite anyone with a serious interest in American history, or America's future.