According to the authors, historical judgments may be contemporary and citizens take a strong interest in telling the stories of their past, but these accounts are those that are supported by institutions such as governments and schools. The debate on how to study history in the United States highlights important issues about “official” and “unofficial” versions of history. The author discusses the different versions of history and how some groups wish to address the struggles of the non-dominant groups. The importance of historical representation on identity, recognition and self-image is important. The authors then move to a discussion of historical representation as mediated action, as discussed by Vygotsky such as sign systems (both spoken and written), narratives and cultural tools. For mediated action, it is important to understand narrative plots and historical individuals including the groups and events that surround them. The authors then describe the small study they undertook examining how undergraduate students in the United States use official history and other cultural tools in formulating an argument on a contemporary political issue. They describe the study including methodology and the three tasks that the students were to complete. A description of the results of the research, including the tools used for official and unofficial histories, are outlined. The first section describes the responses to historical individuals, groups and events and the differences in responses between the tasks. The second section discusses the representation of agency in the narratives, considering the roles various items played in the organization of text. The authors conclude by discussing how they have outlined several forms of evidence which suggest that historical narrative is invoked as a meditational means for each task. The texts generated in the study showed that most students only used one basic narrative tool, official history. The authors discuss how to transcend the use of meditational means in the study of history in the United States.