Lies My Teacher Told Me

Lies My Teacher Told Me

It might be surpsing to you that history is the least-liked subject in American high schools. Why? According to James W. Loewen, it’s because of the misinformation that pervades so many history textbooks and classrooms. With the hugely popular bestseller Lies My Teacher Told Me, Loewen analyzes the 12 most commonly used texts in an attempt to set the record straight, and restore history to its rightful place in the classroom and in the American imagination.

In this revised and updated edition, Loewen surveys six new high school history texts written since the first edition of Lies was published. He adds material to each chapter, noting where the new books have become more accurate, where they are still flawed, and where they have actually become worse. He has also included a new chapter about the ways these textbooks treat the 2001 terrorist attacks and the war in Iraq. The original edition of Lies was a life-changing book for many readers and teachers alike—and in the introduction to the new edition, Loewen chronicles the influence his book has had on the academic establishment.

Showing how history textbooks alter their interpretations depending on the prevailing political winds, Lies opens our eyes to many less-than-flattering historical truths—for example, that Woodrow Wilson was a virulent racist, and that the first colony to legalize slavery was not Virginia but Massachusetts. Ranging across topics as diverse as Reconstruction, women’s suffrage, and the My Lai massacre, Loewen revisits the dramas that shaped our nation, highlighting what’s so appallingly missing from official accounts—and why it matters.

The new material goes a long way toward keeping Lies timely. In addition to discovering that history textbooks have become even longer, more cumbersome and disorganized, Loewen arrives at some damning conclusions. While he finds improvements, especially in the treatment of such topics as Christopher Columbus and the Civil Rights movement, he finds glaring gaps in their coverage of such topics as slavery’s role underlying secession, the importance of social class in America, and such underhanded acts by the U.S. government as our repeated attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. And, as was the case with the original 12 texts he analyzed, their penchant for knee-jerk nationalism is still rampant, as is the absence of real drama within their pages—and, though they bulge with detail, many of them give cursory treatment to the recent past, the very material most relevant to students.

Partly a critique of history textbooks and history teaching methods, and partly a telling of U.S. history as it should—and could—be taught, Lies My Teacher Told Me just might be the most important history book you’ll ever read.

Softcover: 464 pages

Publisher: New Press ( April 01, 2008 )

Item #: 77-7598

ISBN: 9781607512349

Product Dimensions: 6.125 x 9.25 x 1.09 inches

Product Weight: 17.0 ounces