The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Book Cover for: Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, James W. Loewen

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong

James W. Loewen

Reader Score

79%

79% of readers

recommend this book

"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. Beginning with pre-Columbian history and ranging over characters and events as diverse as Reconstruction, Helen Keller, the first Thanksgiving, the My Lai massacre, 9/11, and the Iraq War, 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.

Book Details

  • Publisher: New Press
  • Publish Date: Jul 17th, 2018
  • Pages: 480
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 9.10in - 6.10in - 1.20in - 1.50lb
  • EAN: 9781620973929
  • Categories: United States - GeneralHistoryHistoriography

More books to explore

Book Cover for: O Say Can You Hear?: A Cultural Biography of the Star-Spangled Banner, Mark Clague
Book Cover for: Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest Legends and Lies about Our Past, Kevin M. Kruse
Book Cover for: The Monster's Bones: The Discovery of T. Rex and How It Shook Our World, David K. Randall
Book Cover for: Alexandra Petri's Us History: Important American Documents (I Made Up), Alexandra Petri
Book Cover for: The World: A Family History of Humanity, Simon Sebag Montefiore
Book Cover for: In Whose Ruins: Power, Possession, and the Landscapes of American Empire, Alicia Puglionesi
Book Cover for: The Declassification Engine: What History Reveals about America's Top Secrets, Matthew Connelly
Book Cover for: Joe Gould's Teeth, Jill Lepore
Book Cover for: Illiberal America: A History, Steven Hahn
Book Cover for: Culinary Ephemera: An Illustrated History Volume 30, William Weaver
Book Cover for: Songs of America: Patriotism, Protest, and the Music That Made a Nation, Jon Meacham
Book Cover for: Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest Legends and Lies about Our Past, Kevin M. Kruse
Book Cover for: Making History: The Storytellers Who Shaped the Past, Richard Cohen
Book Cover for: Behold, America: The Entangled History of America First and the American Dream, Sarah Churchwell
Book Cover for: The American Story: Conversations with Master Historians, David M. Rubenstein

About the Author

Loewen, James W.: -

James W. Loewen (1942-2021) was the bestselling and award-winning author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, Lies Across America, Lies My Teacher Told Me About Christopher Columbus, Sundown Towns, and Lies My Teacher Told Me: Young Readers' Edition (all from The New Press). He also wrote Teaching What Really Happened and The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White and edited The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader. He won the American Book Award, the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship, the Spirit of America Award from the National Council for the Social Studies, and the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award.

More books by James W. Loewen

Book Cover for: Lies My Teacher Told Me: A Graphic Adaptation, James W. Loewen
Book Cover for: Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything American History Textbooks Get Wrong, James W. Loewen
Book Cover for: Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism, James W. Loewen
Book Cover for: Lies My Teacher Told Me about Christopher Columbus: What Your History Books Got Wrong, James W. Loewen
Book Cover for: Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong, James W. Loewen
Book Cover for: How to Teach College: Inspiring Diverse Students in Challenging Times, James W. Loewen
Book Cover for: Teaching What Really Happened: How to Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks and Get Students Excited about Doing History, James W. Loewen
Book Cover for: Up a Creek, with a Paddle: Tales of Canoeing and Life, James W. Loewen

Praise for this book

Praise for Lies My Teacher Told Me:
"Powerful . . . it serves as a crucial counter-textbook to provide a more realistic and critical narrative about the American past."
--Truthdig

"A treat to read and a serious critique of American education."
--Award Citation, American Book Award

"Remarkable."
--USA Today

"A lively critique."
--The New York Times

"Honest and well-written."
--Harper's Magazine

"Loewen's book contains so much history that it ends up functioning not just as a critique, but also as a kind of counter-textbook that retells the story of the American past."
--The Nation

"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