Charles Beard
Beard is a 20th century historian who argues that all governments—including democracies and America—are the result of the interests of the wealthy exerting control either directly or by influencing the laws to become first and foremost agents of their own protection.
Emma Goldman
Goldman is an anarchist, feminist, and revolutionary pain in the neck to historians trying to create a sustained vision of American as a place where Marxist theory and socialist sentiment never took hold. She was deemed so dangerous to the preservation of democratic capitalism at any cost that she was deported—even though she was a naturalized citizen—thanks to illegal maneuvers by a young Justice Department official named J. Edgar Hoover.
Andrew Jackson
Jackson is a symbol of the conventional methodology of writing history in which the purpose is to create a record for the sake of propaganda supporting the prevailing power elite. For much of American history, Jackson has been upheld as one of the greatest Presidents; a view which has only in the past few decades underdone such a revision that his worthiness of being portrayed on currency came under review. As the author explains, school textbooks have presented the image of Jackson as “the frontiersman, soldier, democrat, man of the people” while conveniently leaving out information about his legacy as “slaveholder, land speculator, executioner of dissident soldiers, exterminator of Indians.”
