The History Books Purged From the Naval Academy's Library

The Trump administration is engaged in something much worse than book burning. It is attempting to burn down the entire cultural infrastructure that supports the pursuit of history.

We now have a list of the 381 books that have been removed from the U.S. Naval Academy’s Nimitz Library in Annapolis, Maryland. Many of the books in the list fall under categories such as Critical Race Theory, Gender and Ethnic Studies, LGBTQ Studies, etc. They are easy targets in the Trump administration’s continuing war on free thought and the free exchange of ideas.

I have not read most of the books on this list, but I do want to single out six that I have read:

• Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad by Matthew Delmont

• Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James Loewen

• Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity by Donald Yacovone

• Bind Us Apart: How Enligtened Americans Invented Racial Segregation by Nicolas Guyatt

• The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition by Linda Gordon

• No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice by Karen Cox

The six books listed here are all mainstream history texts, published by mainstream presses. All of these authors, apart from Loewen, who taught in a sociology department before his passing in 2021, are respected scholars, who teach in history departments around the country.

Delmont’s book is the most conspicuous of the group. Half American is an incredibly engaging narrative about African Americans, who fought and died for this country during World War II. Its story is the story of the Department of the Navy and every other military branch.

Loewen and Yacovone write about the ways in which the textbooks in our classrooms have reinforced narratives of white supremacy and covered up racial violence.

Guyatt’s book focuses on the story of white liberals between the Revolution and the Civil War, who pushed for a color-blind society, only to end up advocating for separate republics for the races.

Gordon’s book does a fantastic job of exploring the rise of the second Klan in the 1920s above the Mason-Dixon Line.

Finally, Karen Cox’s book is the best introduction to the history and controversy surrounding Confederate monuments that we have.

There is nothing subversive about any of these books unless you believe that simply telling the story of American racism, in a way that is accessible to anyone, is problematic. I wouldn’t think twice about recommending any of these books to high school and college students or anyone else interested in these subjects.

I say this as someone who is conscious about the ways in which politics and other contemporary concerns can undercut scholarship. Though I certainly don’t believe that you need to be a trained historian to write history, I tend to recommend and read authors who have chosen to specialize in it. History is a craft and the ability to think historically is a skill that takes time.

Mainstream history has now become a target of the Trump administration. It’s no longer possible to argue that Trump and his goons are simply concerned with what they perceive to be ‘radical’ or ‘un-American’ scholarship. Anything that challenges or undermines a view of this country as never having struggled with any form of discrimination is now considered a legitimate target.

I’ve made this point before, but it bears repeating. This is not a conservative v. liberal or Democrat v. Republican issue. What we are witnessing goes far beyond any previous political or public debate about what should be permissible to exhibit, research, and teach about American history.

The Trump administration is engaged in something much worse than book burning. It is attempting to burn down the entire cultural infrastructure that supports the pursuit of history.