John's Blog

History for Dummies: The troubling popularity of The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History
Several weeks ago, a history book called The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History appeared on the best-seller charts. It presents a brisk tour of U.S. history from Colonial to Clintonian times, filtered through a lens of far-right dogma, circa 1939.

Politics has always colored the ways that people interpret the past, but The Politically Incorrect Guide politicizes history in a new way, reducing all scholarly inquiry to a mere stance in the culture wars. "Everything (well, almost everything) you know about American history is wrong," states the book's back cover, "because most textbooks and popular history books are written by left-wing academic historians who treat their biases as fact." Just the kind of objective view that the neo-cons are comfortable with.

And another interesting look at how the thought police spin the news appeared in yesterday's NY Times. Well worth a look if you missed it: Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged TV News.