Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest Legends and Lies about Our Past

"We're a republic, not a democracy." I've lost track of how often I hear a caller say that on CSPAN. The second essay in Myth America proves them wrong. The Founding Fathers created a democratic republic - one that valued democracy. They also valued a central government, putting to rest any claims that they highly valued states' rights. And the idea of American exceptionalism would have been foreign to them. 

Kevin Kruse and Julian Zelizer have assembled 20 historians to take on popular myths of American history. It's weighted towards the 20th Century and toward social rather than "event" history and since those are among my interests, some of the material was familiar. I knew the Regan Revolution had roots 30 years earlier, that the party realignment took place not because conservative southern Democrats and liberal northern Republicans switched parties but because the old guard died off and was replaced with a new generation with different party ties, and that the lionization of MLK and the idea of 'good protest' glosses over the fact that he was hated in his day and much more radical than the modern view. Other essays discussed topics with which I only have a passing knowledge, and others put the pieces together for me. Feminism has been portrayed as anti-family, but it's been pro-family since its inception, sometimes to the point of disadvantaging the movement. I learned in high school that while the New Deal helped, the Depression didn't end until WWII - here, Eric Rauchway points out that the New Deal did pull the economy out of a tailspin and the problem was that it wasn't large enough (which echoed during the 2008 recession where more expansive programs could have brought the unemployment rate down faster). Myth America is enlightening, and as essentially a survey course left me wanting to know more.

Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, The Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party

 I don't remember Newt Gingrich being particularly involved in the downfall of Jim Wright, his predecessor as Speaker of the House. In the first half of 1989, I was more concerned with passing P-Chem II (which I managed to do) than with politics. I came home for the summer, and the news was full of reports of a book deal and maybe something to do with the Speaker's wife's job??? I generally don't enjoy current political books, but more than 30 years have passed since this scandal and 20 since Gingrich has been in power, having lost in no-principles partisan game he brought to Washington.

Gingrich originally ran as a reformer, and once elected skillfully used the post-Watergate reforms to attack Democratic politicians. With an already established reputation for personal nastiness and multiple sexual affairs, he somehow managed to claim the "right" side and joined with Republican political operatives like Lee Atwater and Ed Rollins to weaponize the slightest misstep from opponents, even when he was doing the same thing. In an echo of 1998, Gingrich's attack on Wright was based on a contract for a book written in part by his staff which the latter had signed, despite the fact that Gingrich had himself put his name on a book partially written by his staff (and was later reprimanded for it). While claiming to act on principle but amping up the intensity of the political theater, Gingrich changed Congress from a place where progress occurred through compromise to a body more cynical and less productive than he claimed it was. Wright comes across as a flawed man who probably wasn't well suited to the Speaker's job, but Gingrich is the one who did real harm to the body.

Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974

I'm not sure I'm ready for 1974 to be history, because I remember it quite clearly.  OK, so I remember t things like learning how to roller skate, starting first grade, and getting a bike for Christmas more than I remember politics (other than Nixon's resignation, which my parents made me watch because it was history - the same parents who kept 6-month-old me awake so I could say I saw Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the moon). As I read Fault Lines, I remembered where I was, or what I was doing when I heard about the events of the last 45 years.  The section on Phyllis Schlafly brought back memories of being a tween feminist at a conservative school, and the fall of the Berlin Wall coincided with an all-nighter (history paper and Calculus test). I graduated into the early 90s recession, and a decade later had friends caught up when the dot-com bubble burst.  When I watched Barack Obama's 2004 Democratic Convention speech with my dad, he was an obscure Illinois candidate - how can it be that he left the White House over three years ago, and that my dad is gone? Kruse and Zelizer wrote an engaging overview of recent history, although it reads too much like a survey course.  I would have liked a deeper analysis and a bit more attention to non-political culture, but that would require 3580 pages, instead of the more practical 358.