Americans’ desire to blot out the past has always puzzled me. For most of my fellow citizens, it seems that history, barring a few easily recognizable names and dates, does not exist. Culture, likewise with a few icons excepted, consists strictly of this season’s hot attractions. It makes no sense. American history and American culture have, for good or ill, permanently changed the world’s. But Americans’ response to their own past, increasingly, can be summed up in the sentence, “I don’t know who (or... More >>>