authors themselves lived through the events, they were exposed to a wealth of
information from television, journalism, and conversations with others about
the issues of the day. Second, multiple points of view are available, each
backed by evidence, more or less convincing. Third, authors are free to do
research themselves—consult newspapers, interview recent history-makers,
and share their interpretations with scholars in disciplines like political
science, who are studying these issues. Armed with this information, textbook
authors could then develop a story line about the recent past that would be
interesting as well as informative. That’s what I tried to do while writing this
chapter.^11 I concluded that among the most important issues of the past decade
were the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001, our response in Afghanistan, and our
(second) war against Iraq. Far more than the Clinton impeachment, for
example, these three events promise to impact our lives in the future. What do
textbooks say about them? What should they say?
About 9/11, surely students—like other Americans—seek answers to four
questions. First, what happened? Second, why were we attacked? Third, how
did we allow it to happen? Questions two and three lead logically to the fourth
query, Will it happen again?
Perhaps because it is the easiest task, textbooks do tell what happened on
September 11, 2001—at great length. Holt American Nation and The
Americans, for example, devote five full pages to what happened at the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon. They make mistakes; Holt claims, for instance,
“For the first time since the War of 1812, a foreign enemy had attacked the
American homeland.” This will come as news to the residents of Columbus,
New Mexico, where Pancho Villa State Park maintains the memory of
Mexico’s 1916 attack that killed two dozen Americans and left the town a
smoldering ruin. There is also a lot of slack in these accounts—wasted words
that could be far better employed. At one point Holt tells us, for example: “The
collapse of the massive buildings killed or trapped thousands of people still
inside or near the towers, including hundreds of firefighters, police officers,
and other rescuers.” A page later it repeats: “About 2,500 people were killed
by the attack on the World Trade Center. This number included more than 300
firefighters and many other rescue workers who were on the scene.”
Telling what happened answers the least important of the four questions,
because today’s high school students already know what happened. (In three or
four years, however, students too young to remember will need these