Corrective History

American History

For a wide angle view of all of American History, America - The Last Best Hope by William Bennett is a solid coverage of both the good and the bad. This is the all-in-one version. You can also get it in three volumes. He also has other great books on American History and other subjects.

For particular people and events, America's Heroes and Histories by Brian Kilmeade is a great look at four times in early American History when particular individuals greatly affected the paths of our history: Revolutionary heroes the Culpers spy ring, Jefferson vs the Tripoli pirates, Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans, and Sam Houston avenging the Alamo in the Battle of San Jacinto. Again this is the set of all four books, but you can get them individually as well. Kilmeade also has other American and sports history books available.

There are many good almanacs available but the Founder's Almanac by Matthew Spalding is a great collection of knowledge of and from our founding fathers. It includes documents, correspondence, speeches, quotes, chronological info, essays, and the Declaration and Constitution.

Peter J Marshall and David Manuel wrote a three volume series covering American history from discovery to the brink of the Civil War, so all three together cover from 1492 to 1860. They emphasized how God's plan was working through these times, and I'd recommend getting all three if you can. The first is The Light and the Glory and this page has links to the other two - From Sea to Shining Sea and Sounding Forth the Trumpet - as well, and also you can buy all three together on this page.

Here is a very interesting piece of history from the American Revolution. Washington's Immortals by Patrick K. O'Donnell tells the story of an early American unit and its growth from saving Washington's army to becoming an elite unit. It was a very diverse unit of citizen soldiers from Maryland who fought through many of the important battles of the Revolution - The Battle of Brooklyn where they allowed Washington to extricate the Continental Army before it was destroyed or surrendered, Trenton, Guilford Courthouse, Yorktown, and more. As the author is an expert in elite units, he gives a good story but at the same time also explains the tactics going on in the battles very well.

Starting with William Bennett again, he provides an excellent sweeping history of Christianity's first thousand years in Tried by Fire. It does lean towards a catholic view as the author is one, but also is good at highlighting contributions of Christianity rather than only its struggles.

For a look at the heroes who turned back Muslim invasions of Europe in the past, Defenders of the West by Raymond Ibrahim delivers the stories of the great defenders of the faith in Europe.

I think The Book That Made Your World by Vishal Mangalwadi is a great look at the Bible as the book that actually sparked the great thinking of the west - in advancing science, technology, and many other areas. It highlights the Bible's positive influence on education, societal issues and more. It's also quite optimistic on propects for rediscovering this positive influence even now!

Being a military history and strategy buff I am of course interested in the battles we read about in the Bible. When I was a youngster, there was only one good book I knew about on the subject, but now it seems there's a nice little selection for The Battles of the Bible that all look interesting. I have the one by Chaim Herzog and Mordechai Gichon. or rather the edition that was published I think back in the 1980s. Just found a good additional resource, this site on Biblical warfare with a number of good articles.

This may seem an odd entry but it hits on a situation I've seen as an issue for a long time, maybe most of my life. The book Pagan Christianity by George Barna and Frank Viola gives some history of where the church got its non- (often un- or anti-) biblical practices from. Among many important points it makes is how the modern AmeriChurch is geared to work like a business whether or not it has anything to do with actual Christianity. I've actually seen this in action myself in meetings where the main thrust was the church planning to open branch locations (usually in developments that would tend to attract the wealthy) and their main concern was maintaining their 'brand'. At any rate the book brings out many ways the modern church is actually leading people farther from any real faith.

Most attempts at revisionist history depend on its target audience's ignorance as Hosea 4:6 points out. Probably the most ridiculous yet most quickly swallowed without critical thinking example was the recent attempt of the 1619 project to have its claims that black people actually started both America and democracy in America taught in the public schools. This project and the book launching it have been debunked many times over - some examples here , here, and this one written from black perspectives seeking to preserve legitimate history.

One of my favorite authors on modern issues is Thomas Sowell because he supplies much actual historical data and documents his work well. In modern day lingo, he brings da receipts! In Social Justice Fallacies he counters the claims of so-called social justice advocates by showing the actual results of their programs.

I keep seeing a rise in politically motivated agendas to rewrite history as everything or most things being accomplished by black people or by women. I noticed this first in the area of the history of inventions. A search for inventors in Amazon returned only books about black inventors - with an exception of one about women inventors - with one book titled 'Blacks Invented Everything'.. There is a video that was popular that imagined a world without black inventions where of course nothing could be done - thoroughly debunked (and also showing some actual important contributions by black innovators) here. Here are also a couple of sites that give at least a somewhat balanced look at inventors, some white and some black, some male and some female - here and here .

Another area I've seen increasing politically motivated revisioning of history is the appropriation of popular (in games, movies, etc) cultures - Samurai, Viking, etc. I would not doubt that there could have been some black people in these cultures at some points, but the growing number of claims that the entire or a large amount of culture of say vikings were actually all black and that this has been hidden somehow is nonsensical. If anyone needs a helpful counter to this, here is one. Interestingly this same YouTuber has also encountered claims that the vikings were Muslims here.