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Samus Aran on 18 March 2010
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Kasz216 said:
Samus Aran said:
Kasz216 said:
Samus Aran said:


I study history and not a single book I have to learn is written by Americans.

They tend to avoid those books here because they suck most of the times.

 

well that's just silly. The US is generally known to have some of the worlds best historians. As for textbooks, i'd think countries would think most would use their own textbooks. All textbooks pretty much suck no matter what country your in. Hence why the good teachers don't even use them and teach off the source matieral.

That's the reason. US thinks they're best in everything.  Most of my professors write their own books that we have to learn, so it's not really silly.

It's impossible to teach off the source material if you study history unless you speak a lot of languages. They do teach us about historians all around the world though, and a lot of them are Americans.

 

I do have one book written by an American though, it's called "A history of the modern world" by R.R Palmer.

 

It's not just "The USA" that believes this.

Pretty much everbody believes this... you look at the people who are experts in there field, and there are pretty much always Americans there no matter the field.  Espiecally when it comes to fairly nuetral history like "Woman's history."

It's simple really, while primary education sucks... US universites are still some of the best and can go toe to toe with any other countries universities... the difference is...

A) There are a lot more universities.

B) It's a lot easier to get funding and grants of about every kind in the USA.

C) It's a lot easier to get paid, published and get book deals in the USA.

I'm not disputing the fact that American historians are important, but the danger in reading American books is that they often have a "we're superior" feeling.

You might say that Europeans also have a feeling of being superior, but that's not true at all in my university. It's not like I think Europe is superior, heck the east was far superior to us for a long time. I want to vomit sometimes when I hear Americans talk about history.