Lies My Teacher Told Me- Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen
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Web ID: 13394379For 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.
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