Not Written in Stone
Learning and Unlearning American History Through 200 Years of Textbooks
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A teaching edition of the “thought-provoking study” History in the Making, which explores how our view of the history changes over time (Library Journal).
Kyle Ward’s celebrated History in the Making struck a chord among readers of popular history. “Interesting and useful,” according to Booklist, the book “convincingly illustrates how texts change as social and political attitudes evolve.” With excerpts from history textbooks that span two hundred years, History in the Making looks at the different ways textbooks from different eras interpret and present the same historical events.
Not Written in Stone offers an abridged and annotated version of History in the Making specifically designed for classroom use. In each section, Ward provides an overview, questions for discussions and analysis, and then a fascinating chronological sampling of textbook excerpts which reveal the striking differences between textbooks over time.
An exciting new teaching tool, Not Written in Stone is destined to become a staple of classroom teaching about the American past.
“Students, teachers, and general readers will learn more about the past from these passages than from any single work, however current, that purports to monopolize the truth.” —Ray Raphael, author of Founding Myths
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ward wants students to understand history in layers, and offers a historiography illuminating the biases of over four centuries of American historical reporting by looking at textbooks from the last 200 years. Texts in 1832, for instance, referred to the Native American as a savage who was "in general governed by his passions, without much restraint from the authority of his chiefs," a man who is "remarkably hospitable to strangers," but will "revenge an injury whenever an opportunity offers, as long as he lives." But by the late 19th century, Native Americans were "Noble Savages" to be admired for their simpler lifestyle: "The Indian men loved to fight, for they sometimes felt like tigers"; however, when they tired of fighting, "they would sometimes become good friends, as we white people do." Ward groups texts by subject and lays them out chronologically, illuminating sweeping evolutions in historic scholarship and thought. History is often mistaken as a fixed narrative, but with careful research and composition, Ward reveals significant ways in which historians were influenced by the spirit of their time.
