The US is starting to confront that genocide. One of the reasons for our internal problems. But as the country becomes less white…all that is taking a new relevance.

History, as my graduate course instructor in historical methodology pointed out, is also fraught with politics and current mores versus the past.

One book I recommend from that course, because it’s excellent, is the past is a foreign country. It is an extremely good intro into how and why we do history.



https://www.amazon.com/Past-Foreign-Country-Revisited/dp/0521616859/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3ORLBWI60ZBCD&keywords=the+past+is+a+foreign+country&qid=1682956164&sprefix=The+past+is+a+%2Caps%2C230&sr=8-1

As to teaching things like WW2…it’s in most college syllabus. So is the Vietnam war. We got to it in my upper division coursework, and speaking of Vietnam, also to the fun of Watergate. But I still remember my instructor, he was right, saying that Ronald Reagan would skate over Iran-Contra. That was the headline news of the moment. The trauma of watergate would prevent that reckoning.

Now that book, fully recommended. While he is an American historian, his observations apply to the writing of history regardless. The facts are the facts, but what we chose to pay attention to, etcetera, is dictated by the moment.