Read an Excerpt
Only 7 percent can name the first four presidents of the United States in order (Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison), and only 21 percent know that the faces of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt are carved on Mount Rushmore.
While only 25 percent of Americans can identify more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment of our Bill of Rights (freedom of the press, petition, religion, speech, peaceful assembly), more than half can name at least two members of the Simpsons’ cartoon family.
We wrote this book to help make the knowledge of our nation’s history at least match the nation’s knowledge of The Simpsons.
We all share a nation with many people who may look different from us, speak a native language different from ours, pray in a way that may be foreign to us, and dress and eat in ways that we don’t. What, then, holds us together in this vast and varied land of ours?
The one thing all Americans have in common is our history. It doesn’t matter if you’re a first-generation or twelfth-generation American. You own our history. That’s what makes you an American. That’s the glue that holds us together as a people.
