title: History in the Making: An Absorbing Look at How American History Has Changed in the Telling over the Last 200 Years
author:  Kyle Roy Ward 
description: 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. <BR>Copyright &copy; Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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  ## Bring the Jubilee
  
  
    
  
  
  ### Ward W. Moore
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Trapped in 1877, a historian writes an account of an alternate history of
  America in which the South won the Civil War. Living in this alternate
  timeline, he was determined to change events at Gettysburg. When he's offered
  the chance to return to that fateful turning point his actions change history
  as he knows it, leaving him in an all too familiar past.
  
  
  From the Inside Flap
  
  
  
  
  
  “[WARD MOORE IS] ONE OF THE BEST AMERICAN WRITERS.”
  
  
  
  
  
  —Ray Bradbury
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The United States never recovered from The War for Southern Independence.
  While the neighboring Confederacy enjoyed the prosperity of the victor, the
  U.S. struggled through poverty, violence, and a nationwide depression.
  
  
  The Industrial Revolution never occurred here, and so, well into the 1950s,
  the nation remained one of horse-drawn wagons, gaslight, highwaymen, and
  secret armies. This was home for Hodgins McCormick