US History: "Lies My Teacher Told Me"

James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me; Dhr. Seven, Xochitl (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

“Every teacher, every student of history, every [American] 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

This is 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: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong has become one of the most important — and successful — history books of our time.

Having sold nearly 2,000,000 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 Prof. James Loewen has added a new preface that shows how inadequate history courses in high school help produce adult Americans who think Trump can solve their problems and calls out academic historians for abandoning the concept of truth in a misguided effort to be “objective.”

Young Readers' Edition (R. Stefoff, Loewen)

What started out as a survey of the 12 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, Prof. 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 by mass murderers/American soldiers during the Vietnam War, 9/11, and the Iraq War, Prof. Loewen offers an eye-opening critique of existing textbooks.

He also provides a wonderful retelling of American history as it should — and could — be taught to American students. More

• New young readers' edition adapted by Rebecca Stefoff