In Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story, Wilfred M. McClay has produced an inspiring exploration of America's past out of step with the fashionably fractured views found in most popular American history textbooks. In particular, Land of Hope reads like a direct challenge to Howard Zinn's wildly popular 'mutilation' of American history, A People's History of the United States. In the interview below, McClay explains the trouble with Zinn's vision of America, why he sees a hunger for a non-partisan telling of America's story, and why a grasp of our history is so essential to being an informed citizen.
Why is a new history of the United States necessary? Why now?
McClay: We have long had a need for a well-written and appealing history of the United States that, while being informed by the best scholarship, does not lose sight of the big picture about our nation's admirable and exceptional history. Too many of today's textbooks are overburdened with detail and disfigured by partisan animus, and leave students of the American past confused, ill-informed, and unprepared for the task of citizenship in a free society.
Encounter Books
Not long ago, Americans shared a basic consensus regarding our history. How did Americans lose confidence in their own story?
McClay: Some of this came about for reasons that are entirely commendable. We have had, and continue to have, serious national problems, such as our problems of racial inequality, missteps in our relations with other nations, and other problems that show us to be in conflict with our national creed and our deepest values. We are very far from being perfect, and it has been important for Americans to face up to these problems, rather than pretend that they do not exist. Self-criticism is both healthy and necessary in our form of government. The trouble comes when the self-criticism loses all sense of perspective, and becomes relentless and corrosive, taking the nation's flaws as the totality of its being. We have to agree before we can disagree. The loss of basic consensus, and the consequent erosion of our sense of patriotic membership and national unity, have made the solution to our problems far more difficult.
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