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

Written by James W. Loewen

Narrated by Brian Keeler

This national best-seller and American Book Award winner is an entertaining, informative, and sometimes shocking expose of the way history is taught to American students. James W. Loewen, a distinguished critic of history education, puts 12 popular textbooks under the microscope. What he finds is a proliferation of blind patriotism, mindless optimism, misinformation, and flat-out lies filling the pages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 18, 2004
• ISBN: 9781436100755

James W. Loewen

James W. Loewen (1942–2021) was the bestselling and award-winning author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, Lies Across America, Lies My Teacher Told Me About Christopher Columbus, Sundown Towns, and Lies My Teacher Told Me: Young Readers’ Edition (all from The New Press). He also wrote Teaching What Really Happened and The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White and edited The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader. He won the American Book Award, the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship, the Spirit of America Award from the National Council for the Social Studies, and the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award.

Reviews for Lies My Teacher Told Me

[Cartman · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Very important book, albait volume is not necessarily matched by the richness of content. Still it raises important questions and issues for anyone interested in US history.

[robinmusubi-890186 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Good base level on why American history classes are fucked, annoyingly milquetoast about its own conclusions at times, bizzarely tries to equate existing white supremacist history courses with hypothetical textbooks that suggest "black people invented everything and white people invented slavery" (which if anything is closer to the truth than what is currently taught).

[nx74defiant · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I was hoping it would have more information I didn't know. Some of the information on Woodrow Wilson was new. But I'm already familiar with the information on the Pilgrims, Native American's and the plagues, the founding fathers owning slaves.

I found it light on history information. It was way to preachy. Every chapter he reiterates his feelings on how bad history is taught, why it matters and how it should be changed. I got it the first time. I didn't need over and over and over again.

[shirezu · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

My rating says more about me than it does about the book. One of the key points I've come away from the book with is that I'm not part of the target audience. This book is written for Americans. Those who have gone through or are going through the US education system. Coming from a different country I wasn't raised on US history. Everything I've learned I've had to research myself thereby getting round the majority of problems this book talks about.

I can't say the Australian history I learned in school is free from all the same sort of problems but I do believe it was much better.

This book was interesting but I could only recommend it to those who have experienced the US education system or are interested in it. If you're just interested in actual US history there are books out there which would serve better.

[devil_llama · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A decent look at some of the stories behind the stories - the things that don't make it into high school history textbooks. Although bound to be controversial among those who want to keep history clean and tidy, it isn't necessary to accept everything the author says in order to find the stories fascinating and thought provoking. This book just might lead you to do a little further digging on your own, and that can never be a bad thing.

[jairse_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is a must read for any American. I have lent my copy out to numerous people, all are shocked by its contents, but then they each when on to verify the "new stories" that they had been told, only to discover that these stories are history and their history class had been fiction. It is an eye opening experience.

[bibliophile26 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Loewen tells us the real American History story. I knew most of the big things already, but was quite surprised at more than a few details. My favorite moment is when he foreshadows the current administration. Commenting on the state of our government after the Watergate scandal, Loewen predicts, "Since the structural problem in the government has not gone away, it is likely that students will again, in their adult lives, face an out-of-control federal executive pursuing criminal foreign and domestic policies" (p. 229). I was a junior in high school in 1995 (the copyright date of this book) and took US History that year. Now I'm an adult and who is my president? Loewen hit the nail on the head. Loewen was quite hard on high school history teachers and missed a vital point in his critique of why they teach the way they do: testing. You can't skip around and spend a lot of time covering a few incidents in-depth because all of your children would fail the EOC test and that would put your job in jeopardy.