Make Liberals Squeal and Fume

I have a master’s degree in U.S. History and I have taught History and Government for the past six years at a small college in Iowa. I am well-qualified to judge this book, which seems to have drawn polar opposite reviews from people; It doesn’t take long to figure out that the reviews are politically-driven.

Those readers who consider themselves liberal will hate this book because it skewers many left-wing sacred cows. However, Woods also takes many conservative icons to the woodshed as well, including Abe Lincoln and Ronald Reagan. Those reviewers who say that Woods has written a one-sided attack on ‘liberals’ in history must not have read the book.

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I was very familiar with many of the arguments and positions raised in this book before it was published. I have read several of the books that Woods cites in his bibliography. The chapters on the Civil War and Reconstruction, The Great Depression and New Deal, and JFK and LBJ are particularly well done.

It’s amusing to read some of the scathing reviews of this book–almost all of them are groundless. None of the ones I perused raised any significant challenges to his facts. It would be difficult to do so since Woods is presenting well-documented information. From the perspective of a fellow historian, there’s nothing actually new in this book–it’s merely a compilation of facts and data that most readers are probably unfamiliar with.

One is certainly free to support the more ‘politically correct’ history that you can find in every library and textbook in America. What Woods has done is compile some of the historical facts pushed out of those books in the name of political correctness, as he calls it. It creates a counterpoint to the history most of us are used to seeing.

For whatever reason, the things Woods details have indeed been left out of most history books. It’s why historians and history teachers like myself appreciate a book like this so much. It gives us a chance to explore and mull alternative reasons for why things happened the way they did.

This book will be on the shelf of anyone who wants to have a serious debate about a variety of topics in U.S. History, be they liberal or conservative.

Reprinted from Amazon.com.

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