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Oct. 6th, 2009 11:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsAnother one of the nonfiction books that ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gramarye1971 recommended to me was History Lessons: How Textbooks from Around the World Potray U.S. History, by Dana Lindeman and Kyle Ward. The book does pretty much exactly what it says on the cover: goes methodically through the history of the United States, from the "discovery" of the Americas through to the present, using excerpts from international history textbooks. Each excerpt is introduced by a couple of sentences pointing out Differences of Note, but for the most part the authors/compilers pretty much let them speak for themselves. Unsurprisingly, Canadian and Central and South American textbooks get the most representation; the UK and the Caribbean also feature prominently, and other countries sort of weigh in as their history intersects. I doubt it will surprise most of you guys to hear that the US does not often appear as the good guy!
It's definitely worth the read, and is great for noticing what tends to get glossed over in American textbooks - many of the U.S. interventions below the south border get a lot of play, which the history textbooks tend to be unsurprisingly unhappy about. The descriptions of the Korean and Vietnam wars in the textbooks of those countries are pretty fascinating too. (The Canadian excerpts, on the other hand, are occasionally kind of adorable, and full of comments like "CANADIAN FORCES played an EXTREMELY IMPORTANT ROLE in this war" and "naturally, in the wake of this shift in American policy, all eyes were on CANADA to see how they would react!") I noticed, too, that the closer I got to the present, the more of a difference there tended to be from our textbook version of American history and the accounts presented in other places - older history had shifts in focus, but less factual disagreement.
The one big glaring gap that I noticed in the compilation: I really wanted to know what age-range a lot of these textbooks were aimed at. It was obvious that there were differences (sometimes you'd have two different textbooks from one country) and that was the one pieces of information the authors didn't provide. Other than that, they did a pretty good job picking and presenting the selections; I would have liked to read more analysis, but on the other hand, I respect their decision to let the excerpts stand on their own.
(Sidenote: When I was in Israel, I tended to get sort of surprised praise when people saw this book, with an undertone of "Americans interested in someone else's perspective? That is so legit shocking it deserves a cookie!" We're so respected abroad.)
gramarye1971 recommended to me was History Lessons: How Textbooks from Around the World Potray U.S. History, by Dana Lindeman and Kyle Ward. The book does pretty much exactly what it says on the cover: goes methodically through the history of the United States, from the "discovery" of the Americas through to the present, using excerpts from international history textbooks. Each excerpt is introduced by a couple of sentences pointing out Differences of Note, but for the most part the authors/compilers pretty much let them speak for themselves. Unsurprisingly, Canadian and Central and South American textbooks get the most representation; the UK and the Caribbean also feature prominently, and other countries sort of weigh in as their history intersects. I doubt it will surprise most of you guys to hear that the US does not often appear as the good guy! It's definitely worth the read, and is great for noticing what tends to get glossed over in American textbooks - many of the U.S. interventions below the south border get a lot of play, which the history textbooks tend to be unsurprisingly unhappy about. The descriptions of the Korean and Vietnam wars in the textbooks of those countries are pretty fascinating too. (The Canadian excerpts, on the other hand, are occasionally kind of adorable, and full of comments like "CANADIAN FORCES played an EXTREMELY IMPORTANT ROLE in this war" and "naturally, in the wake of this shift in American policy, all eyes were on CANADA to see how they would react!") I noticed, too, that the closer I got to the present, the more of a difference there tended to be from our textbook version of American history and the accounts presented in other places - older history had shifts in focus, but less factual disagreement.
The one big glaring gap that I noticed in the compilation: I really wanted to know what age-range a lot of these textbooks were aimed at. It was obvious that there were differences (sometimes you'd have two different textbooks from one country) and that was the one pieces of information the authors didn't provide. Other than that, they did a pretty good job picking and presenting the selections; I would have liked to read more analysis, but on the other hand, I respect their decision to let the excerpts stand on their own.
(Sidenote: When I was in Israel, I tended to get sort of surprised praise when people saw this book, with an undertone of "Americans interested in someone else's perspective? That is so legit shocking it deserves a cookie!" We're so respected abroad.)
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Date: 2009-10-06 05:20 pm (UTC)*cracking up* omg so fabulous *_*
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Date: 2009-10-06 05:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 08:43 pm (UTC)I'm also reminded of Michelle Magorian's Back Home, where Rusty tells her teacher that she's only learned American history and the teacher scoffs that American history can't take more than a term to learn at the most...
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Date: 2009-10-06 08:48 pm (UTC)Ha, I know, right? 200 years of the US, what's that!
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Date: 2009-10-06 08:56 pm (UTC)I think we did learn some very very basic stuff about America, but so much is osmosis. For instance, I'm pretty sure I learned about the Lincoln murder through the old Swedish parody song about it. (It was written a year after the murder and starts with the line, "Have you heard of the horrible happenings, it's true because it happened right now, when the king of Northern Amerika was shot, was shot in two?" Too soon was clearly not an issue. *g*)
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Date: 2009-10-06 09:00 pm (UTC)Yeah - it's kind of hard to avoid American-history-osmosis, and it's more than a bit embarrassing how little we tend to know about the rest of the world in response! (. . . . *cracks up* Okay, that is hilarious! I would feel the need to track it down, except that it would be incomprehensible to me, what with the being in Swedish. D:)
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Date: 2009-10-06 09:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 09:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 09:24 pm (UTC)Have you heard of the horrible happenings,
it's true because it happened right now,
when the king of Northern America
was shot, was shot in half?
Tjolahopp tjang tjong faleladala,
tjolahopp tjang tjong fallirej.
when the king of Northern America
was shot, was shot in half?
He went out to see the comedians,
for that amused His Majesty,
but he could never imagine
that this would be reason to shoot him.
Tjolahopp tjang tjong faleladala...
But a villain came in through the door,
oh how awfully hideous he looked!
And he was holding a rifle,
loaded with bullets and with blackpowder.
Tjolahopp tjang tjong faleladala...
And he shot that king in the noggin,
so the head straight jumped from his neck,
and the blood splattered on the wallpaper,
and the equerry asked, "I beg your pardon?"
Tjolahopp tjang tjong faleladala...
And they put the king on a sofa
and poured a balsam on his hair.
And the king grabbed his head:
"Gosh darn, I'm feeling sick!"
Tjolahopp tjang tjong faleladala...
"Now, goodbye, my friends," said the king,
"I'm going to the joys of heaven,
where little angels wave their hands,
because they're having such heaps of fun."
Tjolahopp tjang tjong faleladala...
And then the good-natured king died,
and I bet he's blessed now.
But the devil take the villain,
who shot that king in half!
Tjolahopp tjang tjong faleladala...
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Date: 2009-10-06 09:27 pm (UTC)(Sleep well!)
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Date: 2009-10-07 06:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-07 01:04 am (UTC)Either way, it sounds incredibly interesting! I just think that one in particular is fascinating, too...
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Date: 2009-10-07 02:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-07 02:17 pm (UTC)The nearest I can think of when it comes to a book like that is James W. Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, which is a pretty scathing assessment of inaccuracies in high school American history textbooks. I read it several years ago, so I don't remember everything about it, but I do remember squirming as I was reading it -- which suggests that more than a few of Loewen's points hit home.
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Date: 2009-10-07 02:22 pm (UTC)