American History Revised: 200 Startling Facts That Never Made It into the Textbooks

This spirited reexamination of American history delves into our past to expose hundreds of startling facts that never made it into the textbooks, and highlights how little-known peopleand events played surprisingly influential roles in the great American story.

We tend to think of history as settled, set in stone, but American History Revised reveals a past that is filled with ironies, surprises, and misconceptions. Living abroad for twelve years gave author Seymour Morris Jr. the opportunity to view his country as an outsider and compelled him to examine American history from a fresh perspective. As Morris colorfully illustrates through the 200 historical vignettes that make up this book, much of our nation's past is quite different--and far more remarkable--than we thought.

We discover that:

- In the 1950s Ford was approached by two Japanese companies begging for a joint venture. Ford declined their offers, calling them makers of "tin cars." The two companies were Toyota and Nissan.
- Eleanor Roosevelt and most women's groups opposed the Equal Rights Amendment forbidding gender discrimination.
- The two generals who ended the Civil War weren't Grant and Lee.
- The #1 bestselling American book of all time was written in one day.
- The Dutch made a bad investment buying Manhattan for $24.
- Two young girls aimed someday to become First Lady--and succeeded.
- Three times, a private financier saved the United States from bankruptcy.

Organized into ten thematic chapters, American History Revised plumbs American history's numerous inconsistencies, twists, and turns to make it come alive again.

"Everyone has a book in them," it is commonly said. For Mike Morris, growing up in Princeton, NJ, then Harvard College and Harvard Business School, such a book must involve American history, his favorite subject. Harvard Business School doesn't teach you history, obviously, but it does stress the need to think creatively and differently. "In business and investing, you try to predict what's going to happen in the future," he says. "In reading history, you try to figure out what happened in the past. The two activities are essentially the same, they require the same mental skills." Interpreting history, like trying to assess the potential of a new business venture, requires imagination, connecting the dots, seeing the big picture.

Working in New York for twenty years in business, he had no time to write. His favorite hobby was browsing bookstores and buying books faster than he had time to read them. The wonderful life of being a man of letters would have to wait for another day...

It came sooner than expected. Moving to Romania to search out business opportunities in 1994, he ended up staying for twelve years as a founder and owner of two businesses. Life in Europe is a lot slower than in America, and Bucharest does not have all the activities and distractions that New York does. Like in childhood when he read American Heritage from cover to cover, in Bucharest he read every history book he brought over from the United States. He kept copious notes, and filed away stories he found particularly intriguing. But writing a book?

The spur to action can come from an unexpected source. For Mike Morris, it came from his part-time activity as Harvard representative for Romania, responsible for interviewing Romanian high school students applying to Harvard. He was surprised by the interest these students had in America and how America came to be so much more successful than their own country. Their optimism and belief in America was a far cry from high school students in the United States who take America for granted. Clearly, if this was such a dream for them, he must know more about it. So every evening and every weekend, he plunged into his life-long hobby.

"American history," says Gore Vidal, "has fallen more and more into the hands of academics." Indeed, there exists in much of academia a blind obeisance to over-specialization at the expense of imagination and seeing the big picture. What are needed are people who can write intelligent but lucid history for the general public: "popular history."

This he set out to do in writing a book about America's hidden past. For a first-time author to be published by Random House is a perfect start for his second career. He has two other books now under development.

He lives in New York with his wife Gabriela. Every day he works in his magnificent new office, rent-free: the New York Public Library, a treasure trove even more interesting than the internet..