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Lies my teacher told me : everything your American history textbook got wrong  Cover Image Book Book

Lies my teacher told me : everything your American history textbook got wrong / James W. Loewen.

Loewen, James W. (author.).

Summary:

Since its first publication in 1995, Lies My Teacher Told Me has become one of the most important--and successful--history books of our time. Having sold nearly two million copies, the book also won an American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship and was heralded on the front page of the New York Times in the summer of 2006. 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, the My Lai massacre, 9/11, and the Iraq War, 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. For this new edition, Loewen has added a new preface that shows how inadequate history courses in high school help produce adult Americans who can't distinguish evidence from opinion, recognize an "alternative fact" when they see it, or tell the cifference between truth and what comedian Stephen Colbert calls "truthiness."--from back cover.

Record details

  • ISBN: 9781620973929
  • ISBN: 1620973928
  • ISBN: 9781620974674
  • ISBN: 1620974673
  • Physical Description: xxix, 446 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm
  • Publisher: New York, N.Y. : The New Press, 2018.

Content descriptions

General Note:
"First edition 1995, second edition 2007; this new paperback is not a third edition. The only new words in it are in this preface"--Preface.
Bibliography, etc. Note:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 363-438) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:
Introduction: Something has gone very wrong -- Handicapped by history : the process of hero-making -- 1493 : the true importance of Christopher Columbus -- The truth about the first Thanksgiving -- Red eyes -- "Gone with the wind" : the invisibility of racism in American history textbooks -- John Brown and Abraham Lincoln : the invisibility of antiracism in American history textbooks -- The land of opportunity -- Watching Big Brother : what textbooks teach about the federal government -- See no evil : choosing not to look at the War in Vietnam -- Down the memory hole : the disappearance of the recent past -- Progress is our most important product -- Why is history taught like this? -- What is the result of teaching history like this? -- Afterword: The future lies ahead--and what to do about them.
Subject: Indians of North America in textbooks.
Thanksgiving Day in textbooks.
Racism in textbooks.
United States > History > Study and teaching.
United States > History > Textbooks.
United States > Historiography.

Available copies

  • 4 of 4 copies available at Sage Library System.

Holds

  • 0 current holds with 4 total copies.
Show Only Available Copies
Location Call Number / Copy Notes Barcode Shelving Location Circulation Modifier Status Due Date Courses
Baker County Library 973 .L827l 2018 (Text) 37814003184737 NON-FICTION Available -
Hood River County Library 973 LOE 2018 (Text) 33892100793828 Adult Non-Fiction Available -
Southern Wasco County Library 973 LOEW (Text) 33892006369467 NON-FICTION Available -
The Dalles Wasco County Library 973 LOE (Text) 33892006408059 Non-Fiction Available -


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