Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong

by Loewen, James W.
ISBN: 9781620973929
4.7 (3)
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Used - Trade Paperback - 9781620973929

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Overview

"Every teacher, every student of history, every citizen should read this book. It is both a refreshing antidote to what has passed for history in our educational system and a one-volume education in itself."
--Howard Zinn

A new edition of the national bestseller and American Book Award winner, with a new preface by the author

Since its first publication in 1995, Lies My Teacher Told Me has become one of the most important--and successful--history books of our time. Having sold nearly two million copies, the book also won an American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship and was heralded on the front page of the New York Times.

For this new edition, Loewen has added a new preface that shows how inadequate history courses in high school help produce adult Americans who think Donald Trump can solve their problems, and calls out academic historians for abandoning the concept of truth in a misguided effort to be "objective."

What started out as a survey of the twelve leading American history textbooks has ended up being what the San Francisco Chronicle calls "an extremely convincing plea for truth in education." In Lies My Teacher Told Me, James W. Loewen brings history alive in all its complexity and ambiguity. Beginning with pre-Columbian history and ranging over characters and events as diverse as Reconstruction, Helen Keller, the first Thanksgiving, the My Lai massacre, 9/11, and the Iraq War, Loewen offers an eye-opening critique of existing textbooks, and a wonderful retelling of American history as it should--and could--be taught to American students.

  • Format: TradePaperback
  • Author: Loewen, James W.
  • ISBN: 9781620973929
  • Condition: Used
  • Dimensions: 9.20 x 1.20
  • Number Of Pages: 480
  • Publication Year: 2018

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  • Our textbook publishers should try harder to interpret American History to school children in the perspective of our current culture.

    Stephen M. - 4 years 6 months ago

    After reading "Lies" brief review, I was eager to see how today's money-hungry publishers exploit our school children with pulp literature. But as Loewen laid out the truth about American History, I found it much too complicated for young minds. Children's textbook writers must digest tons of research into bite-sized chunks. Outstanding writers are more skillful, and publishers should should pay them more than second-rate writers. Clearly they should not lie, but historical knowledge is always incomplete, and historical perspectives change with our continually evolving culture.

  • A must-read for every adult.

    Bethany H. - 5 years 8 months ago

    Outstanding view into the whitewashing of our history. This should be standard reading for all adults and a study guide for high schoolers.

  • Learn the truth about US History

    CATHy N. - 5 years 10 months ago

    I loved this book and know that I will read it over and over again! It is full of shocking information that we should have learned in school, but sadly didn't. What a different world we might live in today had we been taught the whole story and not just one side of the story. I highly recommend this book!