My how time flies!
When Don’t Know Much About History was first published in 1990, it was simply meant to serve as a fresh new take on American history. Busting myths, with a dose of humor and real stories about real people, the book was conceived as an antidote to the dull, dreary textbooks we suffered through in high school or college.
A year later, on July 4, 1991, I learned that the book was on the New York Times paperback bestseller list, where it remained for a run of thirty-five consecutive weeks — perhaps proving that Americans don’t hate history, they just hate the dull version they got back in high school. There wasn’t much advertising, splashy publicity or a “famous author.” But teachers, students, booksellers, librarians, radio hosts and readers across the country embraced this offbeat, irreverent and quirky approach to history that asks simple questions like, “What is the Mayflower Compact?” as well as odd questions like, “Why is there a Statue of Benedict Arnold’s Boot?”
The book went on to sell more than a million copies, and spawned a series of Don’t Know Much About books. In 2002, Don’t Know Much About History was revised and greatly expanded. Now, after a remarkable decade in American history, there is a newly updated edition —DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY: ANNIVERSARY EDITION– that picks up where that earlier revision left off and brings American history through a churning period of war, calamity, and dramatic upheaval that culminated with the historic 2008 election of Barack Obama and his first year and a half in office.
So what’s different about this new version? Like the original book and the previous revision, this 20th Anniversary Edition is organized along chronological lines, moving from America’s “discovery” by Europeans to more recent events, including the first Gulf War, the end of the Cold War, the enormous repercussions of September 11, 2001,and the election of the nation’s first African-American president.
The book’s final chapter has been significantly expanded to include a review of the extraordinary events that have taken place since 2001, a period that has produced some of the most remarkable changes in America’s history.
Much of this new history reflects on the response of the United States to the calamity of 9/11 and how that day has transformed American life and society, from the way we get through airports to fundamental American attitudes about the right to privacy versus a sense of greater security. The new material begins with an overview of 9/11 and what has been learned about that “day of infamy” after nearly a decade. This revision goes on to recap the response of the Bush administration to 9/11, with particular emphasis on the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. In addition, this added material includes discussions of these events and controversies:
• The emergence of same-sex marriage as a highly divisive, emotional national issue
• The failure of government at every level in responding to Hurricane Katrina, America’s worst natural disaster
• The meltdown of the global economy and the “Great Recession” and the historic involvement of the government in rescuing companies, such as General Motors and Citibank, deemed “too big to fail”
• The surprisingly meteoric rise and election of Barack Obama and the first years of his administration
Besides adding material to cover events that have occurred since this book originally appeared in 1990, I have amplified some of the existing material. This sort of “historical revision” is a necessity because we learn things about the past all the time, often based on new scholarship, scientific advances, and ongoing discoveries that reshape our view of history. For instance, new light has been cast on familiar stories, such as the continuing archaeological dig that is revealing new information about the original fort at Jamestown, Virginia—first discovered in 1996—or the DNA evidence that strongly suggests that Thomas Jefferson had fathered the children of slave Sally Hemings— a nineteenth-century political rumor now treated as near certainty, even at Monticello, Jefferson’s home in Virginia.
This revision also reflects the fact that court decisions can greatly alter American life. A bevy of judicial decisions around the nation during the past eight years has forced a major debate on same-sex marriage as well as the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward homosexuals serving in the military. And in June 2008, the majority on an increasingly conservative Supreme Court struck down a Washington, D.C., ban on handguns in a historic reinterpretation of the Second Amendment and “the right to bear arms” that may impact gun-control laws in most American states.
Finally, history needs to be revised because even “old dog” historians learn new tricks. For instance, in researching and writing two of my recent books, America’s Hidden History and A Nation Rising, I uncovered some surprising “hidden history” in such stories as the fate of the true first Pilgrims—French Huguenots who settled in Florida fifty years before the Mayflower sailed and were wiped out by the Spanish in 1565. Or the story of Philadelphia’s anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant “Bible Riots” of 1844, another episode missing from most American schoolbooks. This revision now reflects these significant but overlooked events.
When I last revised this book in 2002, I concluded by writing:
And yet, how much had really changed? Congress still fights over obscure bills. Children still go missing. The stock market’s gyrations transfix the nation. But something fundamental seems to have changed. Historians may look back at America in late 2002 as the Era of Broken Trust. In a very short space of time, Americans had lost faith in government agencies, including the FBI and the CIA. The church, in particular the Roman Catholic Church, was devastated by a string of revelations about predatory priests. Corporate bankruptcies and revelations of corruption involving Enron, Tyco, Global Crossing, and WorldCom, among others, shattered America’s faith in the financial security of the nation.
As we know, that paragraph has become, if anything, even more salient in 2011. The “Era of Broken Trust” I described at the beginning of the twenty-first century has only worsened as the events of the past decade have further eroded many Americans’ belief and confidence in the nation’s most basic institutions.
Perhaps the best summary of what this period in our history may mean is captured in something President George Bush told Good Morning America on September 1, 2005, during the Katrina catastrophe:
“I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.”
Of course, that was not true, as ample evidence has shown. There had been plenty of cautions about the levees from the public officials, engineers, and academics who had warned of the dangers confronting New Orleans as its protective barrier islands were eliminated by development and the levees ringing a city below sea level were deemed insufficient in the face of a major storm. Similarly, many danger signs had been posted about a raft of other protective “levees” that have also been breached—the risks to the financial system, or the concerns about offshore drilling, and the dire warnings about going into Iraq without justification and without proper troop levels.
The Don’t Know Much About series has always been about asking questions and getting honest, accurate answers. If there is any overarching lesson to be learned from history—especially from this recent history—is that we all have to ask a lot more questions, especially when it comes to making sure the levees will hold.
So thanks to you for twenty years of reading and asking questions.
THE NEWLY REVISED HARDCOVER EDITION (HARPERCOLLINS)
THE ORIGINAL AVON PAPERBACK EDITION (1991)
