Although each of us comes into the world de novo, we are not really new creatures. We arrive into a social slot, born not only to a family but also a religion, community, and, of course, a nation and a culture.

Americans forgot that Natives had ever been significant in our history. Even terminology changed: until 1815 the word Americans had generally been used to refer to Native Americans; after 1815 it meant European

no “white” people in Europe before 1492. With the transatlantic slave trade, first Indian, then African, Europeans increasingly saw “white” as a race and race as an important human characteristic.84 Columbus’s own writings reflect this increasing

Even the Black Death reduced the population of Europe by only a third.

amassing wealth and dominating other people came to be positively valued as the key means of winning esteem on earth and salvation in the hereafter.

that history still remains to be done—that it is not just an inert body of facts to be memorized.

Within three years the plague wiped out between 90 to 96 percent of the inhabitants of coastal New England.

The American Pageant, “the world’s oldest republic had an extraordinary tradition of resilience and resourcefulness to draw on.” (Never mind that tiny San Marino may have formed as a republic in AD 301, Iceland became a republic in 930, and Switzerland around 1300.)

College students today are therefore astonished to learn that Turks and Moors allowed Jews and Christians freedom of worship at a time when European Christians tortured or expelled Jews and Muslims.