ISBN0618377190

My son is currently using this book (2005 edition) for freshman high school US history. It gets the dates and names right, but has a disappointing emphasis on feel-goodism. For example, in the section on WWII (an area where I have some knowledge):

- The Navajo Code-Talkers get their own sidebar on page 579. Their contribution was tactical, not strategic. However, the efforts of codebreakers who defeated Japanese and German encryption (truly war-winning, history-changing contributions) receive no such recognition, despite the pivotal significance of their achievments for the Battle of Midway and the Battle of the Atlantic, among others. Major deficiency!

- Many units distinguished themselves in the air war over Germany. Yet while the 8th Air Force receives no mention, for example, page 573 singles out the Tuskagee Airmen as "Heroes in Combat". The same page runs through the major minority units of concern to the book's authors, like a checklist. An all-Mexican unit is mentioned by name, the 101st Airborne is not!

- The effects of this "affirmative action" in history are a disappointment. As a result of it, for example, space is given to another ethic group checklist on page 564, yet no space is found anywhere for mention of the the Guadalcanal Campaign, the beginning and archetype of the Pacific island war. One has political significance. Apparently the other did not.

This is not as repugnant as the Smithsonian characterizing Japanese aggression in China, Indonesia, and Indochina as an attempt to protect their way of life, certainly. But it neglects key elements of the war (which affected its outcome) for the same of feel-good history. For my son, I can tell him about the distorion and political agenda of this book vis-a-vis the Second World War. But what about everyone else who reads this book?

Trivializing the space program is another obvious blemish. For example, the shuttle Challenger is mentioned, but _Apollo 11_ is _not_!! Why did the authors believe that the first spacecraft to land on the moon was not worth mentioning, but a spectacular disaster was? What were they thinking? Similarly, the book lavishes attention on "social" history and "social" movements. Yet students look in vain for a history of the major technologies of the 20th Century. Lasers? Satellites? Hello? And while Thomas Edison has been called the "inventor of the century" he merits little more than a sidebar and a short paragraph in this book. Apparently the authors felt that only his invention of the lightbulb was worth mention.

Defenders will no doubt say that due to limitations of space some exclusions had to be made, and this is understandable. It's also a cop-out, since non-crucial material is included and crucial material is not. Clearly someone's social agenda was driving the selection process.

Disappointingly, this book seems to interpret history in terms of social movements and social forces to the exclusion of other major factors. And major history which does not fit with this bias is excluded. My son deserves better. So do your kids. So does US history.

My son has the 2006 California Edition, which tags each chapter with the paragraph and section of the specific Grade 11 California Objectives that it addresses. These Objectives focus on the development, in the student, of a sense of history as an ocean of conflicting opinions, some better substantiated than others, and how to begin sorting out distortions and oversimplifications. Although the heavy-handed political correctness we see here and there may be repulsive, and the token emphasis on minorities is silly and at times disturbing, overal the book still makes a serious effort to encourage debate and critical thinking over fact memorization. Of course, at some point, the very process of "critical thinking" can be hijacked to become nothing but lip service to thinking, in which "critique" in itself is an ideology. We pretend to think critically, but we do so in specific ways. Interestingly my son has said that his teacher does not take well to alternate explanations. Yes, McCarthyism was an insane overreaction, but it's not true that there were no Russian agents in the US. The textbook itself does try to be balanced. It could be better, but it sure beats what I had in High School.