Selected Product:
| Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, Revised and Updated Edition
Hardcover
Edition: Rev Upd
Author: James W. Loewen
Publisher: New Press
Release Date: 2008-04-01
ISBN-10: 1595583262
ISBN-13: 9781595583260
List Price: $26.95
Average Customer Rating:
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Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
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.
A mixed bag
| Customer Rating: | | This book certainly has some important points, and much of it is interesting and informative. The central premise that our textbooks are biased to color history is well supported. However, as one can surmise from the less glowing reviews, the author rants way too much, and much of the book is repeating the same point over and over. By the end of the book, I was quite ill from the hurling of pieties from the mountain. |
I have never had a book have such a profound impact on me
| Customer Rating: | This book is a must read. After finishing this book I immediately bought several copies for friends and relatives. I was outraged to find just how much I have been lied to and how these lies and omissions have changed my world view. This was an eye opener.
I can not praise this book enough. |
Wrong Book
| Customer Rating: | | This book was in good condition and I received it in a timely manner. HOWEVER, the book I intended to purchase and the one I received were not one in the same. The seller listed the old version of the book - which contains less information, is a few years old, and has a different cover than the one pictured on the product page. |
Personal Opinions are not Objective Truths
| Customer Rating: | This paperback book is "dedicated to all American history teachers who teach against their textbooks". That claims all the textbooks are wrong but any history teacher who goes against them is right. How can that be? Who is James W. Loewen? This book does not give his background (except on the back cover). Its 444 pages cover many topics. Loewen seems to take a contrary view to Official History by presenting another point of view. Is he motivated by contrariness? Schoolbooks are a product designed to meet the needs of their customers to educate and train the young who grow into adults. Their minds and thinking are controlled by education. The author of this book also wants to control the minds of his readers. The young and naive may be impressed with these essays. Note the irony in the title! Only the knowledgeable will recognize the errors in this book if they choose to read it.
How reliable is Loewen? On page 195 he states "thousands of white Southerners volunteered" to join Sherman but cites no references. The northern counties of Alabama were pro-Union and provided a cavalry that served as Sherman's bodyguard. Many captured prisoners switched sides ("Galvanized Yankees"). Sherman was a former banker and president of a Louisiana college who sympathized with slavery for cotton production. I don't know the percentages of Southerners who were pro-Union or Northerners who were pro-Confederacy. Loewen's nonsense about "ideological strengths" is pure bullspit given the massive manufacturing strength in the North, its railroads, shipping, and politics. Some say the North won because of its income tax and greenback to pay the costs of war. Its grain and petroleum earned more money in Europe than the limited cotton trade. Perhaps the United Daughters of the Confederacy erected a statue to the Confederate dead in Camp Randall Wisconsin because of a prisoner of war camp (p.196)? The Union recruited Confederate prisoners to serve in the Indian Wars in Minnesota and westwards ("Galvanized Yankees").
Loewen didn't do his homework in calling the XIV Amendment a "shining jewel", or demonstrates his bias and error. Other writers have commented on the word "persons" (p.197). That "similar legislation", the so-called Equal Rights Amendment is really a Gay Marriage Amendment. What is Loewen thinking? Why is there nothing in this book about Prohibition? Is America the land of opportunity and equality (p.213)? Don't the history books of other countries also have a positive outlook (p.281)? Chapter 9 discusses the reports on the Vietnam War and shows Loewen's faults: "the War of 1812 lasted only half as long as the Vietnam War" (p.295). There was no declared "Vietnam War" and no peace treaty. There is censorship in the media then and now; you have to search for the truth. Some obscure publications with more news may have slanted opinions. Comparing textbooks has little meaning for people who are not on a Board of Education or can't pick and choose among corporate offerings. [There is no mention of kickbacks to those who choose the books.] Most people get their "history" from Hollywood entertainment. [One poll years ago found people who remembered "Marshal Dillon" of Dodge City; he was a fictitious character on TV.] Why is there no book to answer those six questions (p.254)? Aren't teachers the employees of the school system (p.256)? "To raise a moral question would come across as a violation of classroom norms" (p.256)? Should children be allowed to think for themselves (p.257)? The last paragraph explains the mission of the history books (pp.257-258): they don't prevent the initiation of the next imperialist war. Your opinion may differ.
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Great Book
| Customer Rating: | | This is a great book, offers some different perspectives on some major American myths. Certainly an excellent companion to most major texts on American history. |
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