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When I first moved to America, I made a determined effort to read up on American history. The need to do this — for someone educated in Britain — cannot be overstressed.
Most people outside this country are entirely ignorant of American history. Even the War of Independence is a mystery to most people. Jessica Mitford once observed that British schoolchildren leave their education with the sense that America did something bad in the late 18th century and it isn’t polite to mention it.
But if you are going to live in a country, you should make an effort to learn its history. Or so I think. Though I have discovered how unpopular this view is.
One of the books I started before moving here was Paul Johnson’s “A History of the American People.” It seized me from its opening lines: “The creation of the United States of America is the greatest of all human adventures. No other national story holds such tremendous lessons, for the American people themselves and for the rest of mankind.”
Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Post
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Douglas Murray is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor of City Journal.