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

by James W. Loewen • 1995

This national best-seller is an entertaining, informative, and sometimes shocking expose of the way history is taught to American students. Lies My Teacher Told Me won the American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship. James W. Loewen, a sociology professor and distinguished critic of history education, puts 12 popular textbooks under the microscope-and what he discovers will surprise you. In his opinion, every one of these texts fails to make its subject interesting or memorable. Worse still is the proliferation of blind patriotism, mindless optimism and misinformation filling the pages. From the truth about Christopher Columbus to the harsh reality of the Vietnam War, Loewen picks apart the lies we've been told.