Since its first publication in 1995, Lies My Teacher Told Me has gone on to win an American Book Award, the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship, and to sell over half a million copies in its various editions. 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 … 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, and the Mai Lai massacre, 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.
This 10th anniversary edition features a handsome new cover and a new introduction by the author.
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The information contained herein is valuable in understanding how our history REALLY unfolded, and dispells myth-like hero worshipping and allows us to see these humans for who they really were. Giving them honor for what they actually accomplished rather for superhuman lies put in many history books.
In 1995, James W. Loewen, who holds a PhD in sociology, read twelve of the most popular American history textbooks at the time and critiqued them for accuracy and inclusiveness. In 2007, he read another six textbooks and revised his original work accordingly. He published an edition with a preface about the era of “fake news” in 2018.
The main …
I bought this right before I went into teaching 10 years ago because it seemed like the kind of thing a good teacher should want to read…and then actually started teaching and had no time to do anything but work, eat, and stress a lot. Needless to say, no reading got done. However, given current events and related discussions about history, …
Eye- opening.
An important read that encourages you to question your education.