"The United States is in the grip of a crisis of bad history. Inaccurate interpretations and outright misrepresentations of the past-cultivated within and promoted by the conservative movement and right-wing media over the last several decades-hold sway among large numbers of Americans, damaging our public discourse. In Myth America, historians Kevin Kruse and Julian Zelizer have assembled an all-star team of historians to provide textured analysis that explains what we get wrong about the past. Drawing on their immense knowledge of scholarship and their own primary research, these contributors provide correctives to the ways conservatives distort history to serve the needs of their anti-democratic agenda. For instance: Erika Lee shows how, far from posing a relentless threat to America, immigrants have long been recruited and even coerced to come to the United States. Joshua Zeitz traces how the welfare programs of the Great Society, criticized by the right as wasteful failures, have provided millions of Americans with food security, health care, and education. Carol Anderson uncovers how racism and anxiety over the nation's changing demographics, not voter fraud, are motivating Republicans' assault on voting rights. Elizabeth Hinton reveals that, rather than curbing crime, patrolling low-income communities with outside police forces has historically intensified violence and made everyone less safe. Taken together, the essays unveil how corporate interests and right-wing politicians use bad history to fan the flames of white resentment and unravel America's social safety net. Replacing myths with research and reality, Myth America is essential reading amid today's heated debates about our nation's past"--

Introduction by Kevin Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer
1. American Exceptionalism by David A. Bell
2. Founding Myths by Akhil Reed Amar
3. Vanishing Indians by Ari Kelman
4. Immigration by Erika Lee
5. America First by Sarah Churchwell
6. The United States is an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr
7. The Border by Geraldo Cadava
8. American Socialism by Michael Kazin
9. The Magic of the Marketplace by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway
10. The New Deal by Eric Rauchway
11. Confederate Monuments by Karen L. Cox
12. The Southern Strategy by Kevin Kruse
13. The Good Protest by Glenda Gilmore
14. White Backlash by Lawrence B. Glickman
15. The Great Society by Joshua Zeitz
16. Police Violence by Elizabeth Hinton
17. Insurrection by Kathleen Belew
18. Family Values Feminism by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela
19. Reagan Revolution by Julian E. Zelizer
20. Voter Fraud by Carol Anderson
 

Kevin M. Kruse is a professor of history at Princeton University and the editor or author of five books, including White Flight and One Nation Under God. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.  
  
Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University and the author and editor of numerous books, most recently Burning Down the House and Abraham Joshua Heschel. He lives in New York City.