Real History: More than Just Dates and Dead Guys

Miracles and Massacres – True and Untold Stories of America – Glenn Beck (Threshold Editions)

History. The mere mention of the word can send shivers of dread up the average person’s spine. Anyone who ever has ever suffered through the average public school teacher’s history class can attest to just how boring the subject of history, in this case U. S. history, can truly be.

So what was it that made history sooooo boring? If you think about it, it’s what’s missing…great stories! Think about it…if history was delivered in a fashion that was more than just dates and dead guys and actually delivered so color and context; told real stories then maybe, just maybe history would be more entertaining.

 

Well the proof of that thought is in the pudding…the pudding in this case is Miracles and Massacres – True and Untold Stories of America from Glenn Beck. Beck and his team have taken a series of seminal American stories, warts and all, and illustrated with a injection of drama and insight and gotten the history side of the story through in an interesting and dare I say, entertaining fashion.

If you think you know the story of the My Lai Massacre, or Tokyo Rose or even more recent events like the so-called ‘20^th highjacker” of 9/11, I would bet that you will learn something new to the story. Perhaps the most intriguing story in the lot is that of industrial titans Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. Edison has been heralded as a heroic inventor that had a profound impact on all of our lives. In truth, Edison was a villainous, treacherous, nasty guy.

While Beck and company cop to taking some poetic license with broad brushstrokes in the stories, but not with the facts. Bottom line the facts stand and the tale sells the story. Let’s hope that this will lead to other pieces of our history being touched on in future editions of what will become a series of books.