I own them. It might make you happy, but I can think of a lot of people who would not be, including me.

"Rewriting" history includes discovering the history that was ignored in the past because of social conditions in the past.

For instance, black Americans were only published by vanity presses, self-financed, because no established (read "white") publishing house would print work by a black author no matter how brilliant, innovative, talented or scholarly. Black Americans are, as a result, absent from or stereotyped in old texts.

Let's all look at the way Native Americans are portrayed, as well. They were not absent. They were savage killers of infants, and Custer was a hero. Well. It's certainly, um, simple.

Nope: Give me our current level of inquiry, with better delivery of good writing to the kids. Some of that good writing is old. Nothing beats Austen, Baudelaire, Cooper, Dickens... But we can still read our moderns and benefit from the history that was buried under national and racial agendas.