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.

One Nation Under God: How Corporate American Invented Christian America

My first grade school was part of the (now almost forgotten) religious left. When it closed, I ended up on the other end of the spectrum, and I didn't understand it. How could people who wear their Catholicism on their sleeves be so enthusiastic for Reagan and for shredding the social safety net? How did "freedom of religion" come to mean "you must practice some form of monotheistic religion, preferably Christianity but Judaism might be OK?"

Kevin Kruse traces our public and somewhat skewed view of religion to the corporate reaction to FDR's Depression and WWII programs. FDR used some liberal theology to support his creation of the New Deal, and the businessmen who felt he went too far used theology to claim the programs were not only unnecessary but harmful. This occurred during a time of increasing religious affiliation and attendance to record levels which we now think of as a historical norm.

The new religiosity may have started in the 1930s, but it didn't take hold until the 1950s. Promoted by a handful of ministers (including Billy Graham), an outwardly religious (but unaffiliated in early 1953) President Eisenhower, and the best minds of Madison Avenue, we became a "Christian nation" with public prayers and the insertion of "under god" into the Pledge of Allegiance. As one would expect from a religious movement led by millionaires and advertising executives, it focused on power over mercy, and the separation of church and state became almost blasphemous to both. Kruse devotes the third section of his book to the fallout, the lawsuits and eventual culture war that was inevitable when people began to question authoritarian public piety.

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.