Volume 2 · 1926–2026, with earlier foundations where needed

Who Writes History

Compare textbooks, museums, monuments, and public memory—what was added, removed, corrected, or reinterpreted, and who made those decisions.

Status: Next in the writing order · research not yet begun. This page is the volume's public research plan. No chapters have been drafted and no findings are claimed yet. Sources, change records and chapters will appear here as they are verified, each with a date.

Questions this volume will test

1. Which topics, people and events were added to, removed from, or reframed in widely adopted U.S. history textbooks between 1926 and 2026, and in which editions?
2. Who made those decisions: authors, publishers, state adoption boards, professional associations, courts or legislatures? What records show each decision?
3. How did museums, monuments and public commemorations change over the same period, and who authorized each addition, removal or reinterpretation?
4. Where did a revision correct a documented factual error, and where did it change interpretation of the same facts? The two need separate treatment.
5. What evidence shows effects on what students or the public actually believed, as distinct from what institutions published?
6. Where did the expected pattern not occur, and what explains the exceptions?

Records to collect

• Successive editions of the same textbook title, compared page for page
• State textbook adoption records, hearing minutes and scoring rubrics
• Publisher revision memos and correspondence where archived
• Museum exhibit records, label revisions and accession or deaccession decisions
• Monument authorization, dedication and removal records from the bodies that decided them
• Public-opinion and assessment data on historical knowledge, with their methods

Method

The same eight questions as every volume: what changed, when and where, who promoted or opposed it, what reasons they gave, how it entered practice, what happened afterward, what else could explain it, and how strong the finding is. See the method.