Lies My Teacher Told Me

Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong

By: James W. Loewen

Narrated by: Brian Keeler

Length: 14 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

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. This is a book that will forever change your view of the past.

©1995 James W. Loewen (P)2002 Recorded Books, LLC

Critic reviews

"Lies My Teacher Told Me goes beyond recounting fallacies of history and correcting American image: it surveys social issues misreported, ideas misrepresented, and encourages students of history to think about not only the facts, but the reporting which embellishes and colors their presentation. An invaluable guide for the reader." (Midwest Book Review)
"An extremely convincing plea for truth in education." (San Francisco Chronicle)

Awesome read

Very good book. A must read. I've wanted to read it for years and finally took the time to do so. I'm glad that I did. Great book.

A must read for ALL AMERICANS

I have a graduate level college degree and this book had taught me more about America than any school I’ve ever attended. It makes me both sad and excited. Sad that I just learned but excited to apply the knowledge gained.

Eye opening.

This is a must read for all students and teachers of American history. I had no idea how much we leave out.

So eye opening. Wow!!! A must read.

Every citizen of the United States of America, needs to read this book. My mind is blown.

As advertised!

This book was everything I hoped it would be. Even my partner enjoyed it. I highly recommend it if you are looking to have an understanding of America's white nationalist rising of the modern era.

A Must Read!

We don’t know what we don’t know. But this book makes it very clear that our history text books have been censored to fit a tempered agenda. We are not as free as we think we are... until we are able to decide ourselves using all the information available.
This book is eye opening. The story well told though the performance can be monotone at times. Highly recommended.

Incisive Analysis of the Presentation of History from a Sociologist’s Perspective

This is a remarkable and important book. It is not a history book; nor even a corrective history book. It does present ten major historical topics generally presented incorrectly and incompletely, and explains the actual facts of those matters. But it’s important to know that this book presents those as indictments of, and corrections to a dozen widely used history textbooks. Its true purpose and value is the detailed investigation of why textbooks present white-washed, incomplete or blatantly wrong histories, and the deleterious effect on our citizen’s ability to understand cause and effect, and critically assess the decisions and policies of the government in general, and politicians and business leaders specifically.

This is a sociologist’s analysis of our culture and the importance of teaching the conflict and context of historical events. Only by presenting students with the different perspectives of those involved, the cultural, political and economic pressures on the people in that historical moment, can we teach them to understand the decision processes and biases and goals of the different groups. We need citizens who understand how and why things happened so that they can properly assess and challenge today’s proposed government and societal actions (and inaction) in the context of likely outcomes for all affected groups.

Most would reflexively say that, of course, we need to teach critical thinking. But without an historical perspective on previous opinions, actions, and results, without an understanding of the circumstances, objectives and impact on all “sides” in previous conflict, we cripple today’s student-citizens by not giving them a process and examples of how to approach questioning and analyzing major policies and actions by today’s government. business and community leaders.

Very Interesting

Much of the context of this book regarding the truth about American history I have known. The book goes deeper into each subject and really exposes the facts which are not readily made available or admitted to. The discussion about why textbooks and textbook authors don't incorporate certain facts or parts of history is interesting. I understand some of the reasons why people in America are educated with false versions of history, however, we teach kids that only other "bad" countries do this and that we are one of the few honest and open countries of the world. What kids don't get to learn is that other countries see through this nationalism doctrine and they see America different from the way American kids see it. I think this narrows the world view our kids have. This book is worth the read.

Wow

Fascinating and needed. A must read to get a good beginning of understanding on privilege.

Enlightening

I wish we could tell the truth as I learned here.
We should learn history some other way then hero worship. Face the truth and since history repeats it self we should get it. Right the first time