ABSTRACT
Like their counterparts at the Junior High school level, the High school textbooks deal far more objectively with the First World War than with the American Revolution or the War of 1812. The reason for this is painfully obvious: the story of the Revolution has been encrusted with myth and legend by generations of earlier historians and story-tellers until the kernels o f truth are both hard to find and unpalatable to an audience bred from childhood on sturdier fare. The murderous wars of the twentieth century, on the other hand, do not lend themselves to heroic glorification. To strip away a veneer of untruth about earlier days is far more difficult than to tell the truth about a more recent event.
