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Edited and with an introduction by E. Wendy Saul
These essays by Milton Meltzer deal both with reading and writing nonfiction and with teaching and learning history. Throughout the book, Meltzer makes a case for the value of good writing and the importance and utility of literacy instruction using nonfiction.
Meltzer also addresses the need for better-written history texts and encourages students, by his own example, to engage in critical thinking in the reading and writing of history, and especially biography. In these essays he emphasizes the importance of understanding all sides of historical figures, not just the positive and "heroic" aspects portrayed in traditional texts, and also of studying how events appeared from the perspective of the minority and the underdog–those voices that have traditionally been ignored or silenced.
