Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past by Kevin M. Kruse
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Myth America is a collection of 20 essays by historians on a variety of topics in American History which are often misrepresented or lied about. Some of the topics are relatively recent, but some are as old as the Constitution. And because the authors are all historians, everything is footnoted.

There are a lot of good essays in this book. I learned quite a bit, and there are some things that surprised me too; for example the essay on the Founding Myths. Most of us think of James Madison as being the “Father of the Constitution” but the reality is somewhat different. I also found the essays on the “failures” of the New Deal and the Great Society to be very interesting as well. And the essay on Voter Fraud (and voter suppression) is definitely worth reading as well, given that it has been in the news almost continuously since the 2020 election.

One thing to note is that there is nothing about slavery in the book – the editors discuss this in the introduction. The reason is that there are simply too many myths about slavery to fit into this book.

I really enjoyed reading this book. There are definitely some surprises and I learned some new things.