Not Written in Stone

Learning and Unlearning American History Through 200 Years of Textbooks

In the great tradition of James R Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me, a teaching version of the book that offers a crash course in the “history of history,” and how contemporary prejudices color the way each generation looks at the nation’s past

“Students, teachers, and general readers will learn more about the past from these passages than from any single work, however current, that purports to monopolize the truth.” —Ray Raphael, author of Founding Myths

Kyle Ward’s celebrated History in the Making struck a chord among readers of popular history. “Interesting and useful,” according to Booklist, the book “convincingly illustrates how texts change as social and political attitudes evolve.” With excerpts from history textbooks that span two hundred years, History in the Making looks at the different ways textbooks from different eras present the same historical events.

Not Written in Stone offers an abridged and annotated version of History in the Making specifically designed for classroom use. In each section, Ward provides an overview, questions for discussions and analysis, and then a fascinating chronological sampling of textbook excerpts which reveal the fascinating differences between different textbooks over time.

An exciting new teaching tool, Not Written In Stone is destined to become a touchstone of classroom teaching about the American past.

Books by Kyle Ward

History Lessons
How Textbooks from Around the World Portray U.S. History

Dana Lindaman, Kyle Ward

History in the Making
An Absorbing Look at How American History Has Changed in the Telling over the Last 200 Years

Kyle Ward

Goodreads Reviews