Conclusions are not always pleasant.

Many Americans have never owned a book, and I'm not talking about because of the recent digital revolution. I'm talking about before there even was a digital revolution.

Students will start finding history interesting when their teachers and textbooks stop lying to them.

In sum, U.S. history is no more violent and oppressive than the history of England, Russia, Indonesia, or Burundi - but neither is it exceptionally less violent.

You go to towns in Massachusetts, Greenfield, first settled in 1686. Wouldn’t it be cool if it said, “Greenfield. First settled c. 13,000 B.P. or approximately 13,000 Before the Present. Resettled.” Maybe we could say even, “Resettled by whites,” Or, “Resettled anyway, 1686.” It would have a different impact. And of course it would help explain why the town is called Greenfield, because it was a green field and the fields were left by Native people who had already been farming them.

Nobody would ever want to read a textbook about the Civil War and then interrupt that for two pages about water rights in the west.

Textbooks are written in an oracular monotone, so that they claim to be true and important.