ABSTRACT
In McDougal Littell’s World history: Patterns of interaction (Beck et al., 2005), the index, under letter “A,” lists Abbasid, Almohad, Almoravid, and Andhra dynasties; rulers Abbas the Great of Persia, King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, Emperors Akbar and Aurangzeb of India, Alexander the Great of Greece, Russian czars Alexander II and III, Alfred the Great of England, Ashurbanipal of Assyria, Askia of Songhai, Atahualpa of the Inca, Attila the Hun, and Augustus of Rome; Queens Ahhotep of Egypt, Amina of west Africa, and Anastasia of Russia; and religious figures Abraham, Caliph Abu-Bakr, Thomas Aquinas, Athena, Saint Augustine, and Allah. Even teachers obsessed with names and dates would be hard pressed to justify including almost any of these names. The rest of us, of course, are but bit players in someone else’s story.
