History in the Making: An Absorbing Look at How American History Has Changed in the Telling over the Last 200 Years

From the widely acclaimed co-author of History Lessons, an examination of how the way we tell the story of our country has changed over time.

In this absorbing look at how the telling of American history has changed over the past three hundred years, historian Kyle Ward juxtaposes excerpts from U.S. history textbooks of different eras to compare how the same event or historical figure has been portrayed differently at different times in our nation's history.

From the Boston Massacre to antebellum slavery, the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor to the stock market crash of 1929, Ward uncovers unexpected and often dramatic shifts of interpretation corresponding to prevailing attitudes at the time each textbook was written. History in the Making is the history of history—a stark reminder that even history itself changes over time.

For anyone whose view of history was turned on its ear by James Loewen's bestselling Lies My Teacher Told Me, here is striking, firsthand evidence of the shifting biases, politics, and cultural preferences in both our understanding of our own history and in what we teach our children about the past.

Kyle Ward is an assistant professor of history and political science at Vincennes University, a co-author of History Lessons, and the author of In the Shadow of Glory. He lives in Terre Haute, Indiana.