I think the first important thing is that usually most textbooks are not written by their authors. And so by author I mean the people who did not write them; so it's a new definition of "author."

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.

Very few college professors want high school graduates in their history class who are simply "gung ho" and "rah-rah" with regard to everything the United States has ever done, have never thought critically in their life, don't know the meaning of the word "historiography" and have never heard of it. They think that history is something you're supposed to memorize and that's about it. That's not what high school, or what college history teachers want.

The layout of textbooks, I think, has been done with an assumption that students don't read.

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.

The world, of course, doesn't come divided into disciplines. The world just is.

I think the first important thing is that usually most textbooks are not written by their authors. And so by author I mean the people who did not write them; so it's a new definition of "author."