authoritarianism and class distortion.”nThis suggests a rather bizarre view ofnthe Victorian Age—the freest era in thenhistory of the world—and confuses thenaims of Victorian gentlemen likenTheodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilsonnand Robert LaFollette with the position,nor rather the pose, of the new left ofnthe 1960’s.nIhe worst muddles in FitzGerald’snwork appear in her treatment of thenalleged shifts in viewpoint of textbooksnfrom the 1940’s to the 1960’s. Shenclaims that in the 1940’s a sudden rightwingnblitz terrorized or converted textbooknwriters into becoming conservative:n”By 1950 or so the texts hadnbecome reflections of the NationalnAssociation of Manufacturers’ viewpoint.”nThe resulting texts, we are told,nportrayed Americans as perfect, werenchauvinistic, tended to “side with thenPinkertons against the labor radicals,”nexpressed a “morbid” fear of communismnwhile portraying the United Statesnas surrounded by enemies, and erroneouslynrepresented American values andnpolitical institutions as essentially unchangednsince the time of the Revolution.nFar from becoming expressions ofnconservatism, textbooks that were recognizablynconservative in their treatmentnof recent American history havenalways been extremely difficult to find.nIt is true that a certain shift of outlooknoccurred in the 1940’s; external threats.nWorld War II, the Cold War and postwarnprosperity tended to push evenncommitted liberals into a relatively nonliberalnmood. But a text that really sidednwith the Pinkertons would be hard tonfind and even harder to sell. One wouldnnot know, from reading AmericanRevised, that a substantial number ofnAmerican scholars of varying ideologies,nincluding Daniel Boorstin, Louis Hartz,nSamuel Eliot Morison, Seymour MartinnLipset and David Potter, did argue thatnsince the 18th century the Americannpeople have been characterized by a highndegree of consensus on basic values.n*>*>:nChronicles of CultttrcnAnd it is a fact that the American politicalnsystem has changed remarkablynlittle in two hundred years; ours is nownthe second-oldest continuous governmentnin the world.nWhile the textbooks of the 1950’snmay have had the bad taste (by Fitz­nGerald’s standards) to be anticommunist,nthey were hardly as hysterical asnshe suggests. Far from portrayingnAmerica as alone in a world of enemies,nthey expressed a contemporary moodn•”. . . 11 lasciiiciiinj; iitiJ iiiiponiini book.nThere was a movement to rewrite textbooksnto conform with the latest ideologicalnemphasis on blacks, othern”minority groups” and women. Moreover,nthe portrayal of such groups wasncomplicated by the ideologues’ inabilitynto decide whether the emphasis shouldnbe on the oppression and outrages thesengroups had suffered, or on positivenimages to reinforce their morale, depictingnthem in a favorable light. Fitz-nGerald has some fun with some of then— i^l’ll’SWl’ckn”.Slif ha> iiM-il liLT sDiirii’.s will) u-llini; tftiii and Icfl us the wisi-r for HLT i-tforts.”n— Scir Yi>rh Review itf livohsn”‘riusf inUTiirtl contusionMio nor inJicufi- that MKs (“iizt^-rakr.s Imiiii u;is fiidillci!…”n— Sew York linns Hook Reriewn”. . . IK T arf’.imu-nts . . . an- liiri’tnliy rfsi-ari-lu-d and CDnipfliinjjIy comvyi’il.”n— Puhlixhers Wecklvnthat regarded communist regimes asnthe sole villains of an otherwise peacefulnand friendly world. They presentedna complacent and indulgent view ofnLatin America and the ex-colonialncountries. FitzGerald accuses two textbooknauthors, Bragdon and McCutcher,nof endorsing Senator Joe McCarthy’sncharges as true. But the quotes shencites merely point out, albeit in a slightlynbreathless manner, the incontestablenfact that Communist Party membersnhad spied for the Soviets.nIn treating the following era, Fitz­nGerald is, if anything, even more confused,nalthough she musters enoughnhonesty to criticize some of the morenabsurd results of the fads in textbooknwriting which faithfully reflect thenliberals’ shifts of viewpoint. A belatedninterest in the history of Americannblacks led to a virtual obsession withnracial conflict and a view that splinterednAmerican society into, at best, a patchworknof contending ethnic groups.nnnguidelines publishers have imposed onnwriters: “the most interesting thingnabout them is the rather substantialnmodifications they make in the Englishnlanguage,” particularly in order to conformnto feminist demands. Holt, Rinehartn& Winston urges its writers tonavoid the phrase “the founding fathers,”nand wants men to be shown cooking,nsewing and doing housework—and notnineptly. Houghton Mifflin deplores thenuse of female pronouns in referring tonboats, and apparently deems Tom Painena dangerous sexist. Writers should notnuse phrases such as “these are the timesnthat try men’s souls.”nAs she points out, attempts to accommodatenthe demands of every possiblenminority proved impossible. A ratherninnocuous and favorable reference tonSquanto, an Indian who befriended thenPlymouth colonists, brought loud objectionsnfrom a “Council on InterracialnBooks for Children.” They complainednthat it was “Eurocentric” to characterizenIndians as friendly or unfriendly.n