Description

Every teacher, student of history, and citizen should read this essential book. Widely praised as an effective corrective to traditional history teaching, it provides a comprehensive education wrapped into a single volume.

Now available in a new edition, the national bestseller Lies My Teacher Told Me, first published in 1995, continues to be recognized as one of the most groundbreaking and influential historical works ever published. With nearly two million copies sold, it has received numerous prestigious awards, including the American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship, and has been prominently featured on the front page of the New York Times.

In this updated version, author James W. Loewen delivers a new preface highlighting how inadequate high-school history curricula contribute to adult Americans’ misguided belief that figures such as Donald Trump represent genuine solutions. He also criticizes academic historians who have abandoned the pursuit of truth in their overzealous attempts to appear objectively neutral.

Originally conceived as an analysis of twelve popular American history textbooks, Lies My Teacher Told Me has developed into what the San Francisco Chronicle refers to as “an extremely convincing plea for truth in education.” Loewen captures history’s multilayered complexity and ambiguity, covering extensive topics spanning from pre-Columbian times through Reconstruction, the life and political activism of Helen Keller, the myths surrounding the first Thanksgiving, the tragedy of My Lai, and contemporary events such as 9/11 and the Iraq War. Presenting a highly engaging critique of how textbooks distort history, Loewen offers readers a vibrant and meaningful retelling of American history—a retelling the way it should and could be presented to students everywhere.