Guillermo Gomez Rivera has written a book on aspects of Philippine history that few historians — if any, at al — before him had shone a light on. In "The Filipino State and Other Essays," Gomez-Rivera asserts that Filipinos, in general, do not know that the birth of their nation occurred on June 24, 1571 at the same time that the capital of the new nation, Manila, was founded by the Spanish conquistadors led by Miguel Lopez de Legazpi. He traces this ignorance to the fact that Filipino schoolchildren are made to believe that the Philippine nation as a state with a national government and with all the attributes of sovereignty had existed before the coming of the Spaniards. Gomez Rivera, in debunking the myth that a Philippine nation had existed prior to the coming of the Spaniards, is persuasive in his argument, given the fact that the pre-Hispanic Filipinos did not have a concept of nationhood at all. Rather, they were composed of disparate tribes inhabiting the many islands of the archipelago only loyal to their own tribes and narrow self-interests. While they traded with each other, they did not think of themselves as Filipinos. It was only when the Spaniards settled in the Philippines when a national government was formed and a national territory was defined with an army to impose the law. His book also examines the rule of the American colonizers (the Philippines became a U.S. colony from 1898 to Philippine independence in 1946). He considers American occupation as the culprit for the collective memory loss of Philippine national identity and even the erosion if not the loss of its many languages, including Spanish and Tagalog. Eager to win over the hearts and minds of Filipinos, the Americans demonized the former colonial rulers as the source of everything that was ailing Philippines society, then and now. They fought a brutal war of pacification that lasted several years and resulted in the death of as many as a sixth of the Philippine population at that time (1899-1902) of 10 million Filipinos. What followed was the forced teaching of the English language in all Philippine schools as a medium of instruction with the aim of Americanizing the Filipinos without giving them the benefit of citizenship based on a policy that bordered on racism. With a new language that was incomprehensible to most Filipinos, what resulted was the pidginization of both English and Tagalog, the basis of a national language called Filipino. Because schoolchildren were learning hard concepts through a language that served as a barrier to learning, it spawned generations of Filipinos who can hardly communicate in either English or Tagalog. He also blames American colonialism for the dysfunctional Philippine educational system that favors the elite over the poor. The elite can afford to go to expensive schools to learn English properly while the poor languish in ignorance with no adequate school facilities and competent teachers. This gives rise to a new elitism where jobs are available to those who can speak and write English like Americans, relegating those who don't to joblessness. This book covers a wide array of historical gems that are not found in most history books about the Philippines.