The Leading Facts of American History

Anyone wishing to learn history in America today faces an almost insurmountable challenge.  Modern history texts - even those intended for children - impede the reader with vast quantities of non-essential information.  They abound with biased content while omitting, or at least deemphasizing, many of the most indispensable facts that render the story of the past intelligible.  Consequently, students find themselves unable to grasp the "big picture" when it comes to human history, and thus lack the foundational awareness required to appreciate the deeper meaning and relevance of its component narratives.The reader will be relieved to learn that D. H. Montgomery's Leading Facts of American History is different.The difference lies in the concept of "leading facts."  In the early twentieth century, historians still held to the premise that the purpose of learning history was to become "historically-minded."  This meant that one studied the past not as an end in itself, merely collecting a vast store of factual information, but rather to construct a body of abstract knowledge to inform one's choices and actions in the present.With the intention of providing a useful picture of the past, historians applied a selectivity to their writing, whereby the emphasis was placed on the facts that clarified the causal progression of events culminating in the present, i.e. the "leading facts."As the reader will learn, when one strips away the clutter of history to reveal its straightforward fundamental progression of events, history makes sense as a whole.  This is not to deny the presence of intricacies and controversies.  It is, in fact, to respect these complexities for what they are: adjuncts more appropriately pursued when one has first mastered the leading facts.Scott Powell, HistoryAtOurHouseAll text, table of contents, and index preserved (not an OCR reprint)191 B&W, 12 color illustrations and maps