How I Learned to Love American History

Reading about the history of this country has allowed me to love it, even as I recognize its flaws.

For a long time, I found American history truly tedious to read. Oh, sometimes I’d pick up a book about an American historical figure, and find that I enjoyed it (such was the case with David McCullougah’s biography of John Adams). But, for the most part, when I read history, I focused my attention on the ancient world and on Europe, and I didn’t really read much about the history of my own country. For that matter, I hardly read about modern history, boasting that my interest went right up to 1603, the year of Queen Elizabeth I’s death.

Looking back on it now, I have to wonder if part of my ambivalence had to do with my deep skepticism about America as a whole and ostentatious patriotism in particular. Ever since I was young, I found songs like Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” cheaply sentimental, taking what no doubt were sincere feelings of pride in the United States and turning it into something trite and saccharine (apparently I was a pretentious thing even as a child). It just all felt so cheap to me, and I couldn’t help but think that those of us who were patriotic and loved what this country represented deserved a better way to express it.