From the "taming of the West" to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the portrayal of the past has become a battleground at the heart of American politics. What kind of history Americans should read, see, or fund is no longer merely a matter of professional interest to teachers, historians, and museum curators. Everywhere now, history is increasingly being held hostage, but to what end and why? In History Wars, eight prominent historians consider the angry swirl of emotions that now surrounds public memory. Included are trenchant essays by Paul Boyer, John W. Dower, Tom Engelhardt, Richard H. Kohn, Edward Linenthal, Micahel S. Sherry, Marilyn B. Young, and Mike Wallace.

An incisive overview of the current debate over the teaching of history in American schools examines the setting of controversial standards for history education, the integration of multiculturalism and minorities into the curriculum, and ways to make history more relevant to students. Reprint.

'The History Wars is very important. The book will sit on the shelves of libraries as a code stone to help people understand the motivations of players in today's contemporary debate. It sheds light on the political battle which is carried on in the pubs and on the footpaths about who we are and what has become of us.' andmdash; Hon. Paul Keating, Prime Minister of Australia, 1991-1996 The nation's history has probably never been more politicised than it is today. Politicians, journalists, columnists, academics and Australians from all walks of life argue passionately andmdash; and often, ideologically andmdash; about the significance of the national story: the cherished ideal of the 'fair go', the much contested facts of Indigenous dispossession, the Anzac legend, and the nation's strategic alliance with the United States. Historians have become both combatants and casualties in this war of words. In The History Wars, Stuart Macintyre and Anna Clark explore how this intense public debate has polarised the nation and paralysed history departments. This edition includes a new afterword by Stuart Macintyre which recounts, with rueful irony, the outbreak of controversy that followed the book's original publication, and the further light it shed on the uses and abuses of Australian history.

Time Wars is for anyone who has ever wondered why, in a culture so obsessed with efficiency, we seem to have so little time we can call our own. A courageous, thought-provoking challenge to conventional wisdom.

History has tended to measure war's winners and losers in terms of its major engagements, battles in which the result was so clear-cut that they could be considered "decisive." Cannae, Konigsberg, Austerlitz, Midway, Agincourt-all resonate in the literature of war and in our imaginations as tide-turning. But these legendary battles may or may not have determined the final outcome of the wars in which they were fought. Nor has the "genius" of the so-called Great Captains - from Alexander the Great to Frederick the Great and Napoleon - play a major role. Wars are decided in other ways. Cathal J. Nolan's The Allure of Battle systematically and engrossingly examines the great battles, tracing what he calls "short-war thinking," the hope that victory might be swift and wars brief. As he proves persuasively, however, such has almost never been the case. Even the major engagements have mainly contributed to victory or defeat by accelerating the erosion of the other side's defences. Massive conflicts, the so-called "people's wars," beginning with Napoleon and continuing until 1945, have consisted of and been determined by prolonged stalemate and attrition, industrial wars in which the determining factor has been not military but matériel. Nolan's masterful book places battles squarely and mercilessly within the context of the wider conflict in which they took place. In the process it help corrects a distorted view of battle's role in war, replacing popular images of the "battles of annihilation" with somber appreciation of the commitments and human sacrifices made throughout centuries of war particularly among the Great Powers. Accessible, provocative, exhaustive, and illuminating, The Allure of Battle will spark fresh debate about the history and conduct of warfare.

A centuries-spanning study of twenty-five pivotal wars that shaped world history, from the Greco-Persian War to the Soviet-Afghan War. Driving and dispersing peoples across the globe, giving birth to and destroying great empires, transforming cultures, and determining systems of government, warfare, as much as anything else, has fashioned our world. History’s Greatest Wars: The Epic Conflicts that Shaped Our Modern World highlights pivotal victories that changed nations, even entire continents, forever, and charts the astonishingly rapid evolution of warfare. It delineates defining moments in the development of political philosophies, as well as the scientific innovations that yielded the machine gun, the tank, and the atom bomb. From the Greco-Persian Wars that began in 500 BCE, to the Vietnam War and beyond, it vividly renders the key victories that turned the tide of war, and recounts the heroism of armies and individuals. Yet it does not shy away from showing the acts of savagery that characterize much warfare: the slaughters and massacres. History’s Greatest Wars covers twenty-five of the most important and “thunderous” wars, wars that shook the world and took part in forming the nations that, today, we call home. The best and worst of humanity is on display here, in a collection that will act as a perfect primer for novices while offering seasoned history readers new perspectives on many famous and some not-so-well-known conflicts. Sweeping in its scope, yet intimate in its insights into the motivations of politicians, strategists, commanders, and soldiers, this is a collection that will enhance your understanding of the modern world and your own place in it.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A groundbreaking history of 175 years of American education that brings the lessons of the past to bear on the dilemmas we face today—and brilliantly illuminates the path forward for public schools. “[A] lively account." —New York Times Book Review In The Teacher Wars, a rich, lively, and unprecedented history of public school teaching, Dana Goldstein reveals that teachers have been embattled for nearly two centuries. She uncovers the surprising roots of hot button issues, from teacher tenure to charter schools, and finds that recent popular ideas to improve schools—instituting merit pay, evaluating teachers by student test scores, ranking and firing veteran teachers, and recruiting “elite” graduates to teach—are all approaches that have been tried in the past without producing widespread change.

Centuries of warfare that changed the world are captured in History’s Greatest Wars. This book acts as a perfect primer for novices while offering seasoned history readers new perspectives on many famous and some not-so-well-known conflicts. Each chapter includes a quick-reference summary, a timeline, an overview of the war, essays on its principal leaders, a series of short, often offbeat features on aspects of the conflict, and a detailed account of a pivotal battle.

A History of War explains the dark but compelling story of warfare, from its emergence in prehistoric tribal disputes, through great imperial and global wars, to present-day counterinsurgency and 'hybrid' conflicts. Two factors sit at the heart of this story: technology - including weapons, vehicle systems, vehicles and tactics. A History of War charts the rise of the army, explaining how primitive tribal war parties evolved through seasonal levies and feudal armies to professional standing armies and mass conscription forces, with formal organisational structures. The narrative of A History of War is sewn together by the conflicts that have periodically reshaped history and created the roots of current conflict, from the crusades and two world wars to Cold War and the conflicts in the Middle East. The book provides summaries and insights into these disputes while recognising the human drama of conflict, with first-hand insight into the experience of combat.

‘In 1993, Manning Clark came under severe (posthumous) attack in the pages of Quadrant by none other than Peter Ryan, who had published five of the six volumes of Clark’s epic A History of Australia. In applying what he called “an overdue axe to a tall poppy”, Ryan lambasted the History as “an imposition on Australian credulity” and declared its author a fraud, both as a historian and a person. This unprecedented public assault by a publisher on his best-selling author was a sensation at the time and remains lodged in the public memory. In History Wars, Doug Munro forensically examines the right and wrongs of Ryan’s allegations, concluding that Clark was more sinned against than sinning and that Ryan repeatedly misrepresented the situation. More than just telling a story, Munro places the Ryan-Clark controversy within the context of Australia’s History Wars. This book is an illuminating saga of that ongoing contest.’ — James Curran, University of Sydney ‘The Ryan-Clark controversy … speaks to the place of Manning Clark in Australia’s national imagination. Had Ryan taken his axe to another historian, it’s unlikely that we would be still talking about it 30 years later. But Clark was the author and keeper of Australia’s national story, however imperfect his scholarship and however blinkered that story. Few, if any, historians in the Anglo-American world have occupied the space that Clark occupied by dint of will, force of personality, and felicity of pen.’ — Donald Wright, University of New Brunswick