Books › Lies My Teacher Told Me
Lies My Teacher Told Me
650 pages
A paradigm-shifting unlearning of the sanitized myths that shape the American historical narrative.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like having a blindfold slowly removed, revealing the messy, complex, and often uncomfortable realities hidden beneath the sanitized veneer of standard American history. The pace is steady and deliberate, guiding you through a provocative and intellectually stimulating deconstruction of the myths we were taught as children. The tone is impassioned and critical, yet deeply accessible, replacing dry textbook platitudes with a vibrant, sharply researched narrative. It evokes a mood of paradigm-shifting reflection, where initial disillusionment gives way to an empowering sense of clarity. This is a read for curious skeptics and lifelong learners who crave the unvarnished truth, offering a profound re-education that forever changes how you view the past and the present.
- Mood
- provocative
- intellectually stimulating
- paradigm-shifting
- reflective
- Tone
- critical
- impassioned
- authoritative
- eye-opening
- wry
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- historical erasure · myth of American exceptionalism · power of narrative · systemic racism · unlearning the past
- The writing
- Accessible and conversational, yet rigorously researched and sharply persuasive.
- The arc
- The reader moves from initial shock and disillusionment regarding their own education to an empowered, critical clarity about the complexities of the past.
- Who it's for
- Curious skeptics and lifelong learners who want to dismantle the sanitized myths of their high school education.
Content notes
- racism
- historical violence
- genocide
- slavery
- systemic oppression
About the book
Since its first publication in 1995, Lies My Teacher Told Me has gone on to win an American Book Award, the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship, and to sell over half a 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." In Lies My Teacher Told Me, James W. 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, and the Mai Lai massacre, Loewen offers an eye-opening critique of existing textbooks, and a wonderful retelling of American history as it should -- and could -- be taught to American students. - Publisher.
Description from Open Library.
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