I’m pleased to announce the publication of Jeff Riggenbach’s Why American History is Not What They Say. It is an enormously useful book for anyone who is curious about revisionist (which means rethinking and reevaluating the pro-state mainstream) American history.
There has long been a crying need for a book like this, one that summarizes all the contributions of the major revisionists and evaluates their political outlook, correcting the socialists along the way of showing that there is a major alternative to what is taught by mainstream historians. The field is so large that it can be intimidating even to approach it. This is a special problem for students of philosophy or law or economics. If they come to a libertarian perspective through one of these fields, they might remain nave on matters of history, or unaware of how to going about correcting the problem.
The other issue is that the revisionist books don’t exactly leap out at you from the library shelves. To my knowledge, there has been no general guide and evaluation of all of this literature until Riggenbach’s book, which allows the reader to approach the field intelligently and come to understand the controversies.
There is more about this book on the book page.
This article first appeared on Mises.org.
Jeffrey Tucker [send him mail] is editorial vice president of www.Mises.org.
