Poor Columbus! He is a minor character now, a walk-on in the middle of American History. Even those books that have not replaced his picture with a Mayan temple or an Iroquois mask do not credit him with discovering America—even for the Europeans. The Vikings, they say, preceded him to the New World, and after that the Europeans, having lost or forgotten their maps, simply neglected to cross the ocean again for five hundred years. Columbus is far from being the only personage to have suffered from time and revision. Captain John Smith, Daniel Boone, and Wild Bill Hickok—the great self-promoters of American history— have all but disappeared, taking with them a good deal of the romance of the American frontier. General Custer has given way to Chief Crazy Horse; General Eisenhower no longer liberates Europe single-handedly; and, indeed, most generals, even to Washington and Lee, have faded away, as old soldiers do, giving place to social reformers such as William Lloyd Garrison and Jacob Riis.
可憐的哥倫布！他如今成了個小角色，不過是美國歷史里一個跑龍?zhí)椎摹＜词褂行鴽]有把他的畫像替換成瑪雅廟宇或易洛魁族面具，這些書也不認為是他發(fā)現(xiàn)了美洲，甚至不認為是歐洲人發(fā)現(xiàn)了美洲。書中認為在哥倫布之前，維京人就已經(jīng)發(fā)現(xiàn)了“新世界”，只不過此后的歐洲人或許遺失了地圖或忘記了這些地圖的存在，在之后的500年中再沒有想起來要穿越這片大洋。被時間遺忘和教材改寫的遠不止哥倫布一人。約翰·史密斯上校、丹尼爾·布恩，還有狂野比爾，這些曾在美國歷史上熠熠生輝的人物如今都在教科書中難覓蹤跡，隨之而逝的是美國開拓邊疆時期的種種傳奇色彩。卡斯特將軍讓位于印第安首領(lǐng)狂馬，艾森豪威爾將軍也不再是那個只手解救歐洲的偉大人物。事實上，大部分將軍的身影都在書中漸漸淡去，如同那些老兵的命運，紛紛被諸如威廉·勞埃德·加里森和雅各布·里斯之類的社會改革者們所取代，甚至連華盛頓和李將軍都難逃此劫。
A number of black Americans have risen to prominence: not only George Washington Carver but Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr. W. E. B. Du Bois now invariably accompanies Booker T. Washington. In addition, there is a mystery man called Crispus Attucks. A fugitive slave about whom nothing seems to be known for certain except that he was a victim of the Boston massacre and thus became one of the first casualties of the American Revolution. Thaddeus Stevens has been reconstructed—his character changed, as it were, from black to white, from cruel and vindictive to persistent and sincere. As for Teddy Roosevelt, he now champions the issue of conservation instead of charging up San Juan Hill. No single President really stands out as a hero, but all Presidents—except certain unmentionables in the second half of the 19th century—seem to have done as well as could be expected, given difficult circumstances.
不少美國黑人成了歷史名人：不僅是喬治·華盛頓·卡佛，還有弗雷德里克·道格拉斯和馬丁·路德·金，W.E.B·杜·波伊斯和布克·T·華盛頓也總是相伴出現(xiàn)。此外，還有一位神秘人物克里斯珀斯·阿塔克斯，一位逃奴。關(guān)于他，人們只知道他死于波士頓大射殺，是美國獨立戰(zhàn)爭的首批犧牲者之一，此外無任何確鑿信息可知。泰迪爾斯·史 蒂文斯的形象則被完全顛覆——可以說性格大變，從反面角色變成了正面人物，從懷恨在心的殘酷之人變成了滿腔熱忱的堅毅之人。而泰迪·羅斯福如今成了環(huán)境保護支持者，而不再是過去教科書中圣胡安戰(zhàn)役的英雄。再沒有一個總統(tǒng)被視為英雄，幾乎所有的總統(tǒng)在各自所處的困境中都交出了令人民滿意的政績單——除了19世紀下半葉某些無法提及的總統(tǒng)。
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