History Alive! America's Past

This is a wonderful book for teaching 5th Grade American History. It is concise, yet supplies many interesting details. Best of all are the many activities provided with the Teacher's Guide. Do not let any of the racist commentators' opinions on this site influence you against this book. It is historically accurrate (I hold advanced degrees in history) as well as engaging for students.

TCI and its textbooks, including this one, are under attack by the far right. They want, among other things, to have textbooks rewritten according to their conservative political views. For example, they want anything to do with slavery or slave revolts which could be considered hostile to good confederate conservative "values". The Amistad slave rebellion is not a subject for mention in textbooks. There are honestly people out there who are obsessed with promoting the "good side" of slavery and rehabilitating the reputation of the confederate side in the civil war. There are also people who want to erase harret tubmann from history because her story isn't "accurate" enough for them. TCI and this book are good in that they perform a balancing act in keeping the viewpoints of many people in their books without being hostile to any particular group. But that makes them enemies on the far right who do want the books to be hostile. TCI has produced good books. That they have generated such anger among the far-far-right is a credit to them.

In previous years history has been a boring burden. But now I'm using History Alive: America's Past, and history has come alive! Now history is intriguing and one of my favorite subjects. This book is the best!!! Cameron, age 10, grade 5