Past Mistakes: How We Misinterpret History and Why It Matters
David Mountain2021

From the fall of Rome to the Wild West, Mountain brings color and perspective to historical mythmaking.

Museums are full of pure white Classical sculptures. Over the years, we’ve ignored evidence that they were originally painted bright colors, ‘restoring’ sculptures to a gleaming white and becoming heated about the very idea of a lick of paint. Why? Because the stories we tell about our past affect how we see ourselves today. Just one wrong turn in our understanding of history can infect whole areas of thought – as well as how we look at society and relate to others in the 21st century. Exploring some of the biggest myths, mysteries and misconceptions about the past (Columbus didn’t discover the United States, the Vandals weren’t vandals, Boudicca wasn’t English), David Mountain reveals how ongoing revolutions in history and archaeology are finally shedding light on the truth