Whatever schools our children are attending, the resources for teaching and learning U.S. history have never been more abundant.
Even if not used as the main text, Wilfred McClay’s excellent “Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story” makes a great addition to any classroom. It now comes with a student workbook, a teacher’s guide, and a two-volume version for younger students. Likewise, public libraries are true treasure troves of histories and biographies for students of all ages, books that enhance textbooks in bringing alive people and events from bygone days.
Literature offers another avenue for exploring the United States’ past. As that storyteller of the Old West Louis L’Amour once said, “For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.”…