Myth America: A Historical Anthology (Myth America) Volume 1

The selected historical myths discussed and analyzed in Myth America can best be understood as a series of false briefs about America's past. They are false beliefs, however, that have been accepted as true and acted upon as real, and in that acting they have acquired truth. Therefore, myths remain both true and false simultaneously. In fact, the making of myths is a process by which a culture structures its world and perpetuates its grandest dreams. The idea for Myths America grew out of our (authors) own teaching experiences. In continuously dealing with students who for the most part were beginning their collegiate study of American history, we found that a thematic approach to the nation's past was stimulating. The theme of myth as threads within the diverse tapestry of cultural experience proved to be especially engaging. While offering a strong foundation of classic historical writing and interpretation, Myth America includes numerous fresh selections on the Pilgrims, the nature of the Revolution, popular participation in the Revolutionary War, native Americans, the Founding Fathers, Spain, and the California missions, the Louisiana Purchase, Confederate women, Robert E. Lee, the Gettysburg Address, and rape in the antebellum and postbellum South. We have been guided in our final selections by a desire to offer articles that voice our mythic theme in a scholarly and provocative way: articles that offer students readability and current interest without sacrificing the demands of thorough historical scholarship. We occasionally refer to historiography, for historians function as the culture's preeminent storytellers and so maintain their seemingly contradictory roles of mythmakers and myth-debunkers.