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Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, Revised and Updated Edition | 
 enlarge | Author: James W. Loewen
Publisher: New Press
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
Buy New: $17.78
You Save: $9.17 (34%)
New (6) Used (6) from $17.78
Avg. Customer Rating:  419 reviews
Sales Rank: 4706
Media: Hardcover
Edition: Rev Upd
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 464
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.5
ISBN: 1595583262
Dewey Decimal Number: 973
EAN: 9781595583260
ASIN: 1595583262
Publication Date: April 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The national bestseller and winner of the American Book Award, thoroughly updated for the first time since its initial publication to include textbooks written since 2000 and featuring a new chapter on what textbooks get wrong about 9/11 and Iraq.
Since its initial publication in 1995, Lies My Teacher Told Me has gone on to win an American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship, and to sell one 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 convincing plea for truth in education" beginning with the pre-Columbian period and ranging over characters and events as diverse as Reconstruction, Helen Keller, the first Thanksgiving, and the My Lai massacre.
In this revised and updated edition, James Loewen surveys six new high school history textbooks written since the first edition of Lies was published. In his inimitable style, he adds material to each chapter noting where the new books have gotten more accurate and where they are still fatally flawed. Loewen also writes at length about the way these textbooks treat the 2001 terrorist attacks and our "response" in Iraq. In fact, while researching this new edition Loewen made the front page of the New York Times in 2006 when he discovered that publishers were passing off as original virtually identical passages on important recent events in a number of history books. And in yet another example of the failure of American history textbooks, he found that "celebrity" historians whose names appear as authors in some cases have never read, let alone written, the texts attributed to them.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 414 more reviews...
 Ignorance in Print September 4, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
It's terribly sad that a person so ignorant was able to find a publisher to put this tirade in print. It shows how truly low American publishing has fallen.
 An indespensible reference to real American History August 29, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
When I was in school, history was one of the most boring topics on the menu. The books were dry as dust and the "learning process" was little more than rote memorization. As a senior, I finally encountered one good teacher who went off the curriculum. That changed my life, and I took a degree (as well as additional graduate work) in history.
When I saw this book, I was stunned. I couldn't believe I'd missed the first edition and eagerly picked up the second. It's excellent. It doesn't follow the public-school model of discussing only positive aspects of American History, while discounting anything negative that might upset parents or kids. It shows where we've been -- warts and all.
This is the way history should be taught in schools. As it is, we're lying to the kids to "protect" them from inconvenient facts. This does no one any good. To this day, I encounter people who (for example) firmly believe Colonial America was an egalitarian, religious paradise when this is obviously not the case. I always wondered why they were unable to let go of these beliefs in the face of other evidence. Then I read this book and understood. All they knew was what they learned from the really horrible texts used in public schools.
And this is not a "liberal rewriting" of history, as some others have claimed. The author provides exhaustive footnotes and other references from primary materials to support his points. The difference between this and public school texts is that the latter are forced to tread a narrow political line, and consequently discard any distressing or negative data in favor of dumbed-down pablum that's acceptable to school boards.
Throw away your textbooks except as studies in deception and childish delusion. This is real history. Read it, learn, and understand.
If you love America, read this book! You'll love America August 27, 2008
even more afterwards, and will find U.S. history more interesting. I'm sure that any patriot, liberal or conservative, will be fascinated and touched by the stories in here.(That's part of why I don't think the reviewer for Booklist read a single chapter; I bet he thought he could tell a book from its table of contents.)
By the way, you will be reassured that Abraham Lincoln really was a great leader, rather than a politician overhyped after assassination. It made me feel so great after reading so many attacks on him in the books I've read, including my high school history text.
I bet you will be surprised in what you learn about carpetbaggers and Reconstruction! Sure didn't learn that in my textbook!
Fantastic August 16, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I purchased this book years ago and I still have it. I purchased it after high school (catchy title - what can I say) and have been a history fan ever since. This book should be required reading. Who decided that dry facts and dates are what should comprise a history class? History becomes fun and fascinating when you move past the whitewashed versions of people and truly examine their motivation, inner demons and flaws. I have gone on to read a multitude of history books and continue to search for the soul in people who have accomplished things that aren't regulated to footnotes.
Great read for anyone who hasn't thought about history since high school August 13, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
If you've never had in interest in history and remember cringing at the site of your 1000-page textbook and droll high school American History teacher, this book will engage and enthrall you.
Even people with a profound interest in history and some historians will learn a thing or two from this eye-opening Loewen account of how and why history textbooks failed us as children and continue to fail children K-12 today.
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