This book is a burr in the cuff of American consciousness. The barbs surrounding its vegetable core stick and cling to one's socks as one moseys around the badlands of the American heartland. Page Smith will never be "in power." And perhaps that is good; he has little respect for power and would probably misuse it. He doesn't even teach anymore, having left his post at the University of California at Santa Cruz in protest against a bungled tenure review (not his own). He has nothing to lose. As the author of "The People's History of the United States," Smith is well known for his ability to write history as story. The monographic approach - in which one masters and is mastered by an obscure but limited area of ignorance called one's "specialization" - is not for him. In an essay (included here) called "Students Don't Study History - They Are History," Smith attacks those who think of history as facts and dates (he admits he is always forgetting facts and dates); rather he wants historians to make students "conscious of themselves as historical beings." Starting with the students' own ethnic backgrounds is one of his suggestions. It is not hard to see why timid high school teachers avoid doing history this way.