Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, Revised and Updated Edition by James W. Loewen Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, Revised and Updated Edition
Book Review: An important, though sometimes bizarre, book
Summary: 4 Stars
The concept of this book is absolutely fascinating and it should be read by anyone with an interest in the world around him. That said, some of the author's statements were so off-the-wall that I wasn't sure whether he meant them in jest!This book is filled with all sorts of historical facts and questions- it often becomes essentially the ideal history book envisioned by the author, suggesting that the reader look at history as a series of causes, effects and conflicts rather than as a simple narrative. In addition, by illustrating what current high school texts are lacking (not to mention how they contradict primary sources), a strong argument is made that they are practically worthless.
However, interspersed with the interesting facts and well-supported critiques of the textbooks in question are occasional non sequiturs and wacky pronouncements. For instance, at the beginning of the book, during a discussion of Woodrow Wilson, a random and unsupported (either at that point or later in the book) comment is made about the "Reagan-Bush Administrations" purposely fomenting racial violence, followed by an immediate return to the subject at hand. There is not even a footnote, unlike nearly every other statement in the book. In a later chapter, the author bluntly states that Europeans had no concept of race before 1492. There are obvious problems with this assertion. As a third example, when trying to draw conclusions from his research, the author ponders whether the jingoistic nonsense of most textbooks stems from a rich white male conspiracy. I was honestly not sure whether he meant for the reader to take that idea (which stretched over several pages) seriously.
To his credit, the author's sometimes slanted interpretations do follow his thesis that history should be taught as a series of conflicts open to interpretation. He believes that students should consider what they read and draw their own conclusions, regardless of the positions of the authors or sources. He does usual! ly follow those sections which betray his own bias with the admonition to look at historical events from multiple sides and think about what ideas and feelings drove those sides.
This is an informative and intriguing book which challenges the reader to look at history (and by extension the present) in a whole new light. No one should let himself be discouraged from reading this book and experiencing all that is enlightening within it by those few sections which make one scratch his head.
Book Review: Lies 'Lies My Teacher Told Me' Told Me
Summary: 2 Stars
Loewen issues a blistering and well-deserved indictment of American history textbooks. He charges them with mindless nationalism and selective use of facts. Fine. All of that is valid. The problem is that Loewen then proceeds to do exactly the same thing in his own book.Examples abound. He constantly brings up the environmentalist theme, even devoting an entire chapter to it. How many lines does the famous and as-yet unrefuted Julian Simon, the king of environmental optimism, get? One. Is there any discussion of his theories? No. Loewen takes at least as much for granted as do any of the historians he targets.
Loewen completely ignores the hatchet job performed on many of the businessmen of America's so-called Gilded Age. Most textbooks dismiss without consideration the old shibboleth that Rockefeller, Schwab, Hill, and the Scrantons (for example) were out solely to gouge the consumer and the working man. Nowhere is the view that their entrepreneurship made the vast majority of Americans better off defended or even given space. For Loewen to excoriate textbooks on the basis of factual omission, and then proceed to ignore every omission unsympathetic to trendy left-wing causes, is just plain hypocrisy.
The only consolation is that Loewen does expose an uncomfortable truth: namely, it's impossible to include every fact germane to a historical period. He doesn't go all the way, though, and point out that it's silly to try. Teaching entails selection of facts. Whenever we include some information and leave out other information, our biases and politics have an opportunity to surface. In short, there is NO way to teach the facts of history in an apolitical fashion, because there are simply too many of them. The best we can do is teach the approach to history apolitically, and trust students to care enough to learn the facts themselves.Book Review: The truth hurts--so let the catharsis begin!
Loewen's insightful writing cuts like a knife on the soul of the U.S., excising a sociological tumor that needs be removed: the misteaching of the history of this country. In a well-researched volume, he demonstates how misinformation and fear of teaching anything less than patriotic have damaged the thinking of our country's populus. As an African American and Native American reader, I find the book flushes to the surface the pain of having been marginalized and misrepresented in the annals of this country's story. Both European Americans and People of Color will, no doubt, find it cathartically challenging and refreshing as an aid to begin rethinking critically the road this nation has taken. Quite simply, the book should be considered mandatory reading by all who are concerned about the state of this society.
Summary: 5 StarsBook Review: Good book, but goes to extreme
This is in general a good book in attempting to give a proper perspective on American history. Unfortunately, it swings to the opposite extreme and does at times misrepresent the facts so as to skew the presentation towards the "other perspective". Taken with a small grain of salt, it is worth reading.
Summary: 3 StarsBook Review: One of the best books I've read in years
American history is very badly taught at the high school level. I've known that for years. But Lies My Teacher Told Me helped me understand why, and the great damage this does to our country.
Summary: 5 Stars
The book takes myths we've all been told and explodes them, and shows the danger of teaching our children things that are patently untrue. I'm something of a history buff, but this book kept hitting me with facts, causes, and interpretations that were new to me.
And the book is not an anti-American diatribe, although some would certainly see it as that. For instance, it offers evidence of far stronger anti-slavery feelings in the Civil War North than I had ever realized existed.
Yes, the author has an axe to grind, and the examples he pulls from the textbooks he discusses are probably the worst ones. But his axe is aimed at bad education, which seems worth attacking.
What's more, the book is well written. An entertaining read.