Over the last forty years, history textbooks have become more and more politically correct and distorted about our country’s past, argues professor Larry Schweikart. The result, he says, is that students graduate from high school and even college with twisted beliefs about economics, foreign policy, war, religion, race relations, and many other subjects.

As he did in his popular A Patriot’s History of the United States, Professor Schweikart corrects liberal bias by rediscovering facts that were once widely known. He challenges distorted books by name and debunks forty-eight common myths. A sample:

• The founders wanted to create a “wall of separation” between church and state

• Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation only because he needed black soldiers

• Truman ordered the bombing of Hiroshima to intimidate the Soviets with “atomic diplomacy”

• Mikhail Gorbachev, not Ronald Reagan, was responsible for ending the Cold War

America’s past, though not perfect, is far more admirable than you were probably taught.