Lies My Teacher Told Me- Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen

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Web ID: 13394379

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.

  • Product Features

    • Suggested age range- Adult
    • Format- Paperback
    • Product dimensions- 6" W x 9.1" H x 0.9" D
    • Genre- History
    • Publisher- New Press, The, Publication date- 07-17-2018
    • Page count- 480
    • ISBN- 9781620973929
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3 years ago
from Fort Lauderdale, Fl

For those who Don't Know Much About About History

Second of this author's books that I have read. I had lengthy communications with him in the past about his omissions and unsubstantiated predictions. I pointed out his inexcusable omissions and he tacitly agreed to his faulty scholorship. The premise of this book is that American history textbooks are full of errors. He is correct. HOWEVER, anyone who has taken college courses in American history or read books by McCullough, Caro and/or a host of other great American historians well know the flaws the author points out. Intersestingly it takes the author some 50 pages to set the record straight on Helen Keller. She is frankly not that critical to American history for a HS teacher to spend that kind of time correcting all the myths surrounding her. Kudos for correcting historical myths. Inexcusable errors, ommissions and baseless predictions made by the author. The presence of a large number of footnotes does not cover for the lack of footnotes for the obviously biased political views which evolve into predictions made by the author about events that could have happened (but for X, Y and Z) in say the 1800s. Unsubstantiated, under researched, predictions which never came true based on a set of circumstances the author had HOPED would have come true. The bias by omission is palpable. The author assumes that there were/are no books authored ...ever which have explored the notions that he expresses as what would have been a "better course" for our nation. Those well versed in various views of American history and/or having read the great historians of the 20th and 21st Centuries will cringe... often. Yes HS textbooks are horrible in virtually all respects. HS students would be better off simply reading every book David McCullough has ever written. The author passed away. No idea whether he read "Grant" which is accurate and details a period of American History with precision rather than bias and speculation as this author did. If facts did not fit his narrative this author ignored them.

Customer review from barnesandnoble.com

4 years ago
from Pasadena, California

Better than your average public history book but..

This book is better than your average American history book in your average public school and perhaps even some colleges out there. It gives historical facts that are not mentioned typically or brushed over. The point of view is anti-European and American which leads to the authors bias. I get it European history and American history isn’t just full of Perfect God like heros and always being the good guy. However he many times bashes and downplays some historical figures based upon his dislike for them more than “some” of them deserved and others he did not bash enough.He also uses points that have almost no “valid” historical backing and archeological evidence like they are concrete evidence. Yes it is good to have the idea that maybe there were other “discoveries” done by other people’s but he writes it like those possibilities are fact. All in all the book is a decent read but take it with a grain of salt. I was hoping it would be a lot less bias and contained more uncommon facts but it mostly failed, but it at least gets you question and realize that not all history is fact.

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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com