History Lessons

I have always found history fascinating. Growing up, I had naively assumed that nearly every country had history books much like ours. At that time in my life I couldn't understand that history was a perspective that every person viewed differently. This is why I decided to pick up the book
History Lessons : How Textbooks From Around the World Portray U.S. History. The layout of the book was interesting. It takes significant events from history and lists excerpts from several different country's history books. Events included things ranging from The Viking exploration to the atomic bomb, and the narration of each text book is listed by country of origin. Needless to say, it was obvious from some of the entries about how each event was perceived. The most interesting, in my opinion, was a selection from the only history text to have ever been smuggled out of North Korea. Even though I found the book interesting, I wished that the editor would have a recent narration from an American text to compare. Some of the events listed were unfamiliar to me, and it would've been nice to have a refresher on what I learned in school. Even without this information, the book itself was interesting and something I would suggest to anyone who might be intrigued by comparative history. You can reserve a copy of this book at your local library.