"There are, in truth, as many American pasts as there are Americans"

Common Ground: Reimagining American History by Gary Okihiro is a compelling read. The qoute above sums up the struggle for a multifaceted and comprehensive view of history in our multicultural age. Okihiro continues by writing: "...we simultaneously redefine and redeploy our ideas of ourselves...within our contexts of history and society...".Okihiro recounts 19th and early 20th century racial history in the United States through the binary lenses of East/West, Black/White, and Heterosexual/Homosexual. He very effectively utilizes the iconic 1893 World's Fair in Chicago as a microcosm of these various dichotomies and how they played out in the United States. Okihiro maps out the cognitive and emotional landscape that in part brought about the heinous discrimination of this era of history. It is short enough to be a great supplemental text for a United States History course seeking to provide more in depth exploration of racial discrimination in the heyday of American Empire building.