*** Every country worth its salt has a national narrative. Something to which it looks for who its people are and how it has been built.

If its people are not on the same page there is discord and mis-communication about the basics of history.

A good education informs all of the citizenry of what one needs to know -- makes a polyglot into a whole.

To outsiders it seems as though textbooks are seen within Educational Theory as a rigid and regimented way of teaching.

The fashionable theories of the day hold that we can only make creative and inventive people if we allow children to explore new areas through research.

That is fine. But only if one is a graduate student with a thorough grounding in research techniques and the basics of the subject.

The "Dead White Males'' and those women and colonised people now joining the canon of literature were great because they knew the classics which came before them.

Canonical literature is the national narrative.

So where does W. S. Zuill's "The Story of Bermuda and Her People'' come into this? It is the only "national narrative'' giving the basic overview of what Bermuda now is.

Sure there are both snapshots and arcane analyses of Bermudian History -- our canon, if you will -- but there is nothing that puts it all together.

What Mr. Zuill has done is to tell our history cover to cover in 260 pages and do it well.

Let me be clear, I know Mr. Zuill, I work for his son, and I may have in a previous incarnation assisted, however small, in collecting the research for this book.

Nothing can compete with "The Story of Bermuda and Her People'' in telling how we got here. Every child should own one and all adults should consult one.

Whether dealing with legend (St. Brendan's alleged voyage) or the immediate (November 9, 1998), Zuill tells it in the quick and breezy way reporters are trained to do. Except of course, when we write reviews! Oh, there are mistakes, like goofing the year of the looming general election of 1998 (page 209) and a clarification is needed of the date of the extension of the right to vote for all adults (page 124 and 203).

But it is invaluable for a quick, overview of how the Island came to be what it is.

During this decade, the Ministry of Education produced two books, "This is Bermuda'' and "Bermuda Civics'' for its students which seemingly, have all but disappeared.

While the idea is right -- textbooks -- their increasing costs in shrinking budgets means that children do not get their own copy to refer to.

It is not an always present part of their lives to become well worn as they learn the interconnections of each part of Bermuda history.

Now an old reliable has been revised and updated. One wonders whether it will return to its old role of textbook, and ensuring we all know what we need to know.

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