by Jack N. Rakove
Abstract
Myth America has become a smashing success. Princeton historians Kevin Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer have proudly noted their astonishment at seeing the wonderful essays they coedited immediately surge into the New York Times list of nonfiction bestsellers. At a moment when scholars are collectively agonizing about the state of the field, the endless shrinking of the job market, and the parlous direction of the nation’s history, it is a great solace and inspiration to see lay readers thinking seriously about how Historians Take on the Biggest Legends and Lies about Our Past. Yet for the readers of this journal, Akhil Amar’s contribution, “Founding Myths,” may seem disappointing, or at least a missed opportunity. The problems with “Founding Myths” are substantive. Living at a time when the entire constitutional system is under extraordinary stress, one might have hoped that Amar would address topics that deal with our contemporary woes—as the other contributors to this volume do. But Amar “offers no sense of how” his five myths originated, “how and why [they have] been perpetuated and for what reasons, or what the stakes are.”