What gets lost in the textbook is the overall narrative. It gets lost in all the boxes and all the photos and all the little stuff that's stuck in all the time.

We still have to realize that if you are say a historian of the Civil War, you don’t know anything special about say Columbus or for that matter the 20th century. You are a consumer of that information, especially if it’s stuff like Columbus and the American Indians. That information isn’t even in history, much of it. Much of it is in anthropology or archeology.

It is always useful to think badly about people one has exploited or plans to exploit... No one likes to think of him or herself as a bad person. To treat badly another person whom we consider a reasonable human being creates a tension between act and attitude that demands resolution. We cannot erase what we have done, and to alter our future behavior may not be in our interest. To change our attitude is easier.

Columbus not only sent the first slaves acroiss the Atlantic, he sent more slaves than any other individual

Teachers need to teach the subject rather than to teach the textbook.

Conclusions are not always pleasant.

There's no excuse therefore, for a 1,152 page book. I think we should all be using 300-page paperbacks. These exist.