Dr. Trey Berry is passionate about Arkansas history.

The dean of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Arkansas at Monticello thinks Arkansans have been shortchanged by an educational system that teaches very little about their native state.

Berry set about rectifying the problem by authoring an Arkansas history textbook for grades 5 through 7 entitled The Arkansas Journey, published in 2007. Now Berry and a colleague on the UAM faculty are working to fill a void in the state’s history at the collegiate level.

Berry and Dr. Kyle Day, assistant professor of history at UAM, have recently published Arkansas History: A Collegiate Reader to be used as a supplemental text for college curricula. The 610-page book is a collection of articles and primary documents to be used as a resource for Arkansas history classes at the collegiate level.

The book contains newspaper editorials, including the famous editorial penned by the late Harry Ashmore of the Arkansas Gazette on the crisis at Little Rock Central High School. Also included are autobiographies, reminiscences, explorer’s diaries, inaugural addresses of the state’s governors, an essay on the legacy of Governors Bumpers, Pryor and Clinton, and primary documents such as the state Slave Code and the Articles of Secession.

Berry and Day spent two years compiling the information for the book. “One of the things we’ve found out in this process is the dearth of books about Arkansas history,” said Berry. “There are fewer books about Arkansas history than almost every state in the union. This is a state with a rich, colorful, fascinating history that needs to be told.”

Arkansas History: A Collegiate Reader is being distributed to college faculty across the state. The reader will serve as a companion piece to a new collegiate textbook on Arkansas history currently in the planning stages by Berry and Day. “We want to create a true Arkansas history textbook for the collegiate level,” said Day. “We want to fill a void and improve the teaching of Arkansas history.”

Berry and Day hope to have the new textbook completed in two years.

For more information, contact the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at (870) 460-1047.