I know the authors start the book by adamantly stating it's NOT a history book, but in my opinion it is, and a much needed one, at that.
Identifying bias in non-fiction texts is one of the standards commonly taught in English Language Arts, and while some students can easily pick up on the bias in "no bias" history writing, others struggle to identify it.
This book is excellent for this standard and is written in language your students will easily understand. Yes, it touches on a very raw topic for our country -- racism. But if you're willing to examine that topic in your classroom, and how racism has played out over our country's history, it's an excellent book. Furthermore, the authors do possibly the best job I've seen in a long, long time in a non-fiction text of scaffolding, or building students' prior knowledge, as the reading progresses, so your students will feel they have a basis, a grounding, for evaluating other texts they're asked to read, evaluate and analyze after this one.
I do believe after reading this book, your students will be able to better identify the biases inherent in seemingly unbiased texts in ways they probably hadn't thought of before reading. And they'll be better prepared to be antiracist forces in our society, which we very much need.
TEACHERS NOTE: It also comes with a FANTASTIC, and I don't say this often, 20-page Educational Guide. It goes day-by-day with 20 days of lessons, including Essential Questions, a Reader's Notebook, and creating an antiracist timeline. It offers extension research projects for after or concurrent to reading. It's clear the authors had middle grade readers (7th/8th grades, possibly high school but it would be a quick read for older students) in mind when they a) adapted this version from the adult version of the book, and b) designed the educational guide. All too often fantastic books get published, but then never make it into the classroom for lack of free teaching materials. As you well know, teaching a new book is daunting, to say the least, without some support, aka the resources you know you'll need to use in the classroom. This book offers them. The teaching guide is superb!
