We've all had the feeling that the real history of the United States isn't the history we were taught. Subtle revelations over our adulthoods--such as realizing the Founding Fathers were slaveholders, and Nixon did other things besides Watergate--make us aware that we did not get the whole story growing up. This book confirms all of that. 
 History didn't just happen. Things caused other things to happen. This more than anything is what was missing from my own personal Social Studies courses. History courses present the topic as a series of inevitable events, not a dynamic of possibilities and choices. For example, nobody taught us the cause of racism, or the cause of the Great Depression, or the reason there was conflict with the Native Americans, or the exact reason for the Civil War. All of these things simply happened on their own, seemingly with no buildup or reason. This book fills in many of those gaps. 
 I never knew Helen Keller was a radical socialist. I also never knew Woodrow Wilson was a blatant racist, and that under his administration, local and state governments felt comfortable institutionalizing Jim Crow and other segregation laws. Racism and segregation existed long before Wilson, of course, but because the president was all for it, it became an accepted part of the social system. One thing caused another. My history courses never made this clear, and history is boring that way. 
 It also shows that social class has always existed in America, and reveals that school textbooks go out of their way to dispel any notion that America is anything less than a classless society in which anyone can rise to the top if he or she works hard enough. By and large, success has to do with lineage and environment, not individual determination. This isn't to say successful people can't come from poor backgrounds, but school teaches these exceptions as the rule. A simple look at the poverty immigrants at the turn of the 20th century had to live in attests to that. America was supposed to be the Land of Opportunity, but most immigrants only found drudgery and prejudice. As a result, many turned to crime to survive because they lacked other opportunities. 
 Also lacking in American history is coverage of the Vietnam War. Even this book is sparse on its examination for what it was really about, which is the point: we're still not sure what we were fighting for, and if we can't figure that out now, we sure as hell didn't know it then. 
 So many myths that need to be exorcised from the American conscious. Columbus was not a good person; North America was not untamed wilderness by the time of his landing; most of our military actions in foreign countries are prompted by large business interests rather than human affairs; and the reason the Middle East hates us is because we have invaded their countries, repressed the people and stolen their resources, not because they're jealous of our "freedoms." 
 History textbooks will likely not change, but we are adults. We can accept that much of what we learned was either an outright lie, or a lie by omission, and we can make up our own minds. This is how school should be teaching us to think.