New England that devastated Indian societies before the Pilgrims came. “I
didn’t know about it” was his straightforward reply. To his credit, soon
afterword Garraty learned about the Columbian Exchange and made it the first
entry in his 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About American History.^55
Sometimes authors do know better. As previously mentioned, in After the
Fact, a book aimed at college history majors, James Davidson and Mark Lytle
do a splendid job telling of the Indian plagues, demonstrating that they
understand their geopolitical significance, their devastating impact on Indian
culture and religion, and their effect on estimates of the precontact Indian
population. In After the Fact, looking down from the Olympian heights of
academe, Davidson and Lytle even write, “Textbooks have finally begun to
take note of these large-scale epidemics.” Meanwhile, their own high school
history textbooks leave them out.^56
How are we to understand this kind of behavior? Authors know that even if
their textbook is good, it won’t really count toward tenure and promotion at
most universities. “Real scholars don’t write textbooks” is a saying in
academia.^57 If the textbook is bad, the authors won’t get chastised by the
profession because professional historians do not read high school textbooks.^58
The American Historical Review, Journal of American History, and Reviews
in American History do not review high school textbooks. Thus, the authors’
academic reputations are not really on the line.^59
Adoption boards loom in the textbook authors’ minds to a degree, especially
when publishers bring them up. Authors rarely have personal knowledge of the
adoption process—I am an unfortunate exception. Editors may invoke students’
parents as well as adoption boards in cautioning authors not to give offense. “I
wanted a text that could be used in every state,” one author told me. She relied
on her publisher for guidance about what would and would not accomplish this
aim. Mark Lytle characterized his own textbook as “a McDonald’s version of
history—if it has any flavor, people won’t buy it.” He based this conclusion on
his publisher’s “survey of what the market wanted.”^60
On the other hand, publishers know that “students, parents, teachers want to
see themselves represented in the texts,” as one editor said to me, and
occasionally influence authors to make their books less traditional. Michael
Kammen tells of a publisher who tried to persuade the two authors of an
American history textbook to give more space to Native Americans. Thomas