Quotes from Kenneth C. Davis

It is impossible to understand history, international politics, the world economy, religions, philosophy, or 'patterns of culture' without taking geography into account.

The sight of one man standing up to challenge God and country is something that Madison, Jefferson and Franklin would cheer, and every American can celebrate.

How strong is a faith that can't stand up to a few honest questions?

Memorizing information is valuable but only if you're able to make some sense of the information and put it into a useful context. Isn't it much better if we can attach something tangible to that information?

The following twenty years would be the nadir of American Indian history, as the total Indian population between 1890 and 1910 fell to fewer than 250,000. (It was not until 1917 that Indian births exceeded deaths for the first time in fifty years.)

The notion of Spaniards fighting Frenchmen in Florida four decades before England established its first permanent settlement in America, and half a century before the Pilgrims sailed, is an unexpected notion to those accustomed to the familiar legends of Jamestown and Plymouth.

It might be useful to think about authoritarianism, totalitarianism, or any kind of dictatorship in the same way we think about dangerous, life-threatening, infectious diseases. The best prevention against such a disease is to build immunity. Education is like a vaccination. Understanding history is part of the process of making ourselves more immune to the dangers of dictatorship.

Most of these displaced Acadians traveled south to the vicinity of New Orleans and would later be known as Cajuns.

By the time the war was over, Great Britain also had a new monarch in George III, who had taken the throne in 1760. And in Boston, a feisty American lawyer named James Otis would issue his first political tract and argue that American colonists possessed all the rights of an English citizen.

On April 30. 1789, George Washington stood on the balcony of Federal Hall in New York City, the temporary national capital. He took the oath of office on a Masonic Bible, ad-libbing the words "So help me God," which the oath of office as specified in the Constitution does not require.

The distinction between the Pilgrims, those who came to Plymouth between 1620 and 1630, and the Puritans, who came after 1629, initially settling Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut, eventually disappeared as the great wave of Puritan settlers transformed the colony.16

Puritanism—the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. —H. L. Mencken (1949)

how the innate and insatiable curiosity young children have about the world gets absolutely killed by the tedium of school.

Two boys wearing masks, the most visible symbol of the epidemic

1539 First printing press in New World set up in Mexico City.

what really led to the conquest of the Americas was not military might or a superior culture. The largest single factor in the destruction of the native populations in the Americas was the introduction of epidemic diseases to which the natives had no natural immunity.

The process of election affords a moral certainty that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union.

Of course, on a map oriented along the lines of this jingle: North to the ceiling, South to the floor, West to the window, East to the door it did appear that the Nile River flowed up. I can't tell you much else about what happened in that classroom that year.

The word "planet" comes from the ancient Greek word for "wanderer," because the planets seemed to move against the more fixed lights of the stars.

Don't Know Much About Mythology takes a slightly different tack. It sets out to examine all the fascinating myths created by these ancient cultures and relate them to their histories and achievements.