Miseducating Americans

Richard F. Hamilton is emeritus professor of sociology and political science at The Ohio State University, USA. He has written twelve books and seventy articles, mostly dealing with elite and mass politics and their interconnections.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Major Themes1 Land of the Free, 1776–18652 Land of the Free, 1866 and After3 Benjamin Harrison's Presidency4 Hanna, McKinley, Roosevelt, and Carnegie5 America's Empire, 1898 and After6 On War and the Military7 On Those Past Events, the Twentieth Century, and Likely FuturesIndex

"Miseducating Americans: Distortions of Historical Understanding examines accounts of American history appearing in textbooks and popular accounts and compares them with the reports in scholarly monographs, considering how myths came to be considered as recorded history and taken as truth. The difference between this coverage and other examinations of American historical record is its focus on textbook history and how it's presented. Chapters debunk common explanations of American historical fact and, even more importantly, consider how these reconstructions of fact arose, and the social and political pressures surrounding them. The result is a solid college-level examination of how inaccuracies were created and passed on: key for any discussion about how American historical fact has evolved." - California Bookwatch