One can assemble the revisionist works of the New Historians, the New Left Historians, and the Libertarian Historians into a coherent narrative of American history from the Revolution through the early days of the Cold War. In effect, this is precisely what Gore Vidal has done, in his American Chronicle novels. FULL ARTICLE

Until late in the 19th century, most historians regarded themselves neither as social scientists (a concept that did not even exist before the 19th century) nor as humanistic scholars, but rather as literary men, men of letters. The stories they were telling were true, of course, but nonetheless they were telling stories, just as though they were novelists, and their job, as they saw it, was to tell their stories as vividly and poetically as any novelist. FULL ARTICLE

What Americans know and understand about the history of the society in which they live will determine the degree of their willingness to honor and preserve its ideals and traditions. More than that: it will determine what they regard as the ideals and traditions of their society. It will determine nothing less than the kind of society they will seek to strengthen and perpetuate. FULL ARTICLE