There are two common laments that average folks have about history: (1) They’re trying to rewrite it, and (2) they never taught me that in class.

While there are multiple reasons for both statements, one that they have in common is the limited amount of time that can be devoted to history in high school or college survey courses. If an educator only touches upon the basics of the American colonial period and then tries to get within the life experiences of his students, he faces the daunting task of cover at least 250 years worth of information in nine months or less. Thus there’s little time for that piece of the past between Columbus and the Declaration, an comparable amount of time.

It’s not uncommon, then, for most Americans to know little of the colonial era other than some thin understanding of the Pilgrims. Thus a nasty massacre of French Huguenots in Florida by the Spanish a half century earlier never gets mentioned. The story of how a Massachusetts woman carrying a hatchet — no, not Carrie Nation — and a handful of scalps became a hero is not one that gets celebrated at Thanksgiving. And perhaps as relevant to American history as the turkey were Queen Isabella’s pigs.

It’s not that you were absent the day these things were covered in class. Hardly anyone else heard of them either. Fortunately, Kenneth C. Davis, author of the bestselling “Don’t Know Much About History,” did stumble across these stories and ably wrote recorded them in his “America’s Hidden History, Untold Tales Of The First Pilgrims, Fighting Women, And Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation.” Davis continues on this theme, telling of George Washington’s culpability in a massacre that happened years before the American Revolution, how an egg-toss and a founding father in a toga figured into events in revolutionary Boston and some details about a group of little-known farmers who almost derailed the American experiment before the Constitution was even written.

But that is what Davis has done best in his career — tell Americans about things we missed along the way. Whether it was about the Bible, the Civil War, geography or mythology, Davis has written books about each topic bringing insights missed by others. In the case of his 1.5-million seller, “Don’t Know Much About History,” the appeal was not only the information, but the light and humorous fashion in which it was written. Davis is not a trained historian — in fact he never graduated from college — but he has spoken before social studies teachers and has received an honorary doctorate from Concordia College because of the fame associated with his writing. More importantly, he has a talent for highlighting the oddest of historical facts.

“Hidden History” does not follow so much in the same vein as the “Don’t Know Much About” series, in that it often lacks the wit and humor the former works had. But these essays have a depth not found in those books and a writing style more reminiscent of a novelist than a historian. And that makes it worth your time.

So, you didn’t know about these details in history? You’re not alone. No, they’re not rewriting history — whoever “they” are. They just did not have time to cover that first few centuries before the Constitutional era. But here is an entertaining way to flesh out that skeletal part of the past you may have missed, and in an entertaining fashion, to boot.