Rating: 
Summary: Essential Reading
Review: This book hits the problems with American History texts on the nose. Finally a book that explains the rest of the story. I always wondered where the animosity between the Soviet Union and the US came from. I collect old newspapers and books and never found anything from period papers that said "states rights" had anything whatsoever to do with the Civil War, the issue was Slavery... Period! I am a little mystified at how some of the readers from outside the US can condemn this book, since I doubt they ever read our old textbooks. This book is excellent and essential for every student of American History.
Rating: 
Summary: A different perspective on what we assume to be true.
Review: The weird thing about history is that once people learn it, they don't give it much thought. The average citizen just assumes it to be true for the most part.This book is a healthy look at how reality differs from the contents of history textbooks. And it differs enough that it prompts a person to wonder - why do we bother teaching history if it's giving us fiction rather than reality? Surely, the real facts would inform our future actions better. I enjoyed the book, but did find myself flipping pages occasionally when I thought Loewen was getting a little long-winded. I thought he supported his conclusions well enough, and he certainly makes his point. Some reviewers have said that it will annoy conservatives. I'm not exactly certain why. If they don't like Loewen's conclusions or opinions, then certainly the facts themselves are plenty interesting. Ignorance is the reward of those who are offended by the facts, liberal conservative or whatever.
Rating: 
Summary: Caveat emptor
Review: There is much here that is useful and important, but Loewen is, alas, quite a screechy advocate of his positions, not all of which he satisfactorily defends. Instead of puncturing myths, he often digresses into quibbles over words. For example, one of his "lies" is that whites took over Indian lands in order to farm them, which statement offends him on the grounds that the Indians were already farming them. But obviously the textbook in question means "... so that they (the whites) could farm them for their own purposes." Aging hippies will love this book, conservatives will despise it, and liberals (like me) will be alternately intrigued, irritated, and embarrassed by Loewen's holy crusade and narrow focus.
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Summary: Changed the way I looked at American History
Review: I read this book my freshman year in college and it changed the way I looked at America's historical figures and the American government. I did not know that the CIA tried to assasinate Fidel Castro with an exploding cigar, was never taught that our founding fathers owned and advocated slavery, never knew that the inspirational Helen Keller was an outspoken communist, and did not know about the atrocities Christopher Columbus committed against the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Lies My Teacher Told Me was one of the first books I truly was changed by. It helped me to realize that almost everything in this world has a good and a bad side. It took me 12 years of schooling and a sociology class to realize that America had a dark past and a not so glorious one.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent insights
Review: Loewen indicates that his main task was to examine about a dozen American history textbooks designed for high school students. He argues that these textbooks suffer from a common set of flaws that reduce their educational value. I found Loewen's analysis interesting and his style straight-forward and engaging. Some other reviewers have attacked Loewen for his apparently leftist agenda. Well, sure, Loewen's politics are clearly leftist. And those with similar views will more readily accept his positions. However, Loewen repeatedly argues that many of the problems with the set of textbooks cannot be reduced to liberal content or conservative content. What the textbooks choose to emphasize often has little impact on modern life or relationship to current historical scholarship. Loewen has an agenda but you don't have to agree with every single point to agree that many textbooks give students a poor account of American history. Loewen specifically indicated the textbooks he used for his study. Some of those were dated at the time of his writing. Also, Loewen's own analysis will grow increasingly dated as textbooks change. However, many of his points will continue to be relevant. Plus, many of us went through high school with exact the kinds of books Loewen reviews. The version of history that he critiques is the version many of us were given. Lies My Teacher Told me would be an interesting read for those adults wanting to re-examine American history and for high school students encountering much of it for the first time.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: My expectations probably caused me to dislike this book more than any other reason. I expected to learn some things I didn't know. I didn't. I did not expect to be preached at. I was. Many of the author's criticisms of textbooks are valid ones, but his clear political agenda will probably prevent anyone's being persuaded who does not already agree with him. My own orientation is important here: I consider myself a moderate liberal; I am not the conservative he seems to despise.
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Summary: Look elsewhere for serious discussion of educational reform.
Review: Loewen's book is flawed and often dishonest. The reasons are many: 1) Loewen's thesis, that "Eurocentric" history textbook writers conspire to purvey "blind patriotism and bland optimism," is a dishonest appraisal of current trends in public education. The reverse is true: the educational establishment generally supports the imposition of left-wing multiculturalism on students while suppressing and vilifying Western culture. Textbook companies, sympathetic to the left, thus routinely inflate the glories, real and invented, of women and "people of color," and exaggerate the dark side, real and invented, of Western culture. Loewen cannot be unaware of this, which makes one wonder about his motives. (For a balanced report on one skirmish in the textbook wars, try "Battleground" by Stephen Bates. The chapter on the textbook industry is enlightening, and contradicts Loewen's core thesis.) 2) He complains that textbooks are filled with "countless factoids," but proposes that they be filled with even more. It is interesting that Helen Keller was a dedicated radical socialist, worshipping a political system that murdered over a hundred million innocent people, but it is irrelevant to the scope of a high school history book. (For an indispensable discussion of what Americans "need to know" and why, please read "Cultural Literacy" by E.D. Hirsch, Jr.) 3) Loewen complains that textbooks "indoctrinate blind patriotism." While paying lip service to American greatness, he seems more intent on amassing claims to the contrary. The truth is, however, that America was founded on great principles and has made steady, conscious progress, albeit with regressions, in applying those principles to all peoples. Loewen sees the need to emphasize our failings, but it is more constructive for all of us to emphasize our progress. It is hard to see, moreover, how entitling a book "Land of Promise" or "Rise of the American Nation" does anything more harmful than to state the obvious. 4) Many of his facts are just plain wrong. The claim, for example, that American Indians influenced the political philosophy of the Founding Fathers is absurd, outrageously misinterpreting existing evidence while ignoring over two millennia of Western history. There is much more along this line. Loewen then has the gall to accuse Abraham Lincoln, of all people, of using "bad history." 5) While complaining about what is not being taught, Loewen again pays only lip service to the textbooks' omission of the indispensable role of religion in American history. (For an excellent presentation of the truth about the American heritage, read "The Theme is Freedom" by M. Stanton Evans. "The Gift of the Jews," by Thomas Cahill, is also useful for understanding how the very concept of human freedom arose out of Judaism.) 6) Thomas Carlyle wrote, "The history of the world is but the biography of great men." Heroes are important for students: if emphasized, they help perpetuate qualities such as honesty, frugality, and self-sacrifice that are necessary to maintain civilized society. The process is called modeling, and it works. Loewen disagrees: he tears down our dead white male heroes, but is not averse to flaunting our heroes and heroines of color. When students choose non-Americans as their heroes, he sees it as a "healthy development." 7) The idea that history will become less "bor-r-ring" if we would only teach more left-wing revisionism (as indeed we already are) is ridiculous. This book certainly succeeds as a political polemic for liberal multiculturists, whose prescriptions are already poisoning both American schools and American culture. Anyone serious about truly improving our schools should look elsewhere. (A good start would be "The Learning Gap" by Harold W. Stevenson and
Rating:
Summary: A new perspective on history
Review: I am an eleventh-grade student attending a suburban private school. I am currently enrolled in a required American History class - and, like many students (if you believe Loewen, MOST students), I can't stand it. I have my own reasons for this - fortunately, though, I haven't had to deal with traditional history textbooks, like the ones that Loewen surveys in this book, to any significant extent. I consider myself very lucky in this regard. So why don't I like history? For the same reason that many others don't - the way it is taught in my school, it seems irrelevant. There is too much emphasis on rote memorization and not nearly enough integration of concepts. Why? Because rote memorization is so easy for teachers to teach. Unfortunately, it has left me and many of my friends unsatisfied. That's where this book comes in. I'm not opposed to history as a discipline - though I'm not a big history buff, I can understand why history is so important. However, traditional history teaching has left me unsatisfied. This book, however, fills in a lot of holes that many people have in historical education. The portion of the book that I found the most enlightening was the first chapter, on the "heroification" (I believe this is Loewen's word) of such people as Woodrow Wilson, Helen Keller, and Christopher Columbus. According to Loewen, our history textbooks are really mythological tracts. They ignore such problems as Wilson's racism and Columbus' genocide, and paint the picture of Keller as a blind-deaf girl who managed to succeed without explaining *what* exactly she did. Why? She was a socialist. That can't be put in textbooks. This process, frankly, disgusts me - it's worse than making gods out of people. Even the Greek gods weren't perfect. The mythological thread continues in Chapter 3, "The Truth About The First Thanksgiving." I've always been rather cynical about Thanksgiving as a holiday, because it seems so artificial. (If anyone is interested, I can send a copy of an essay I wrote about the topic.) If you're the patriotic type, DO NOT read this chapter. Many of your most cherished beliefs will be shattered. Remember, European settlers didn't discover virgin land. Native Americans - who are not savages, contrary to popular belief - were here first. (This is another one of Loewen's favorite topics - the portrayal of "less developed" or "primitive" (I wish I could find a less loaded word, but I can't) societies as necessarily inferior in quality of life. See Chapter 10, "Progress is Our Most Important Product".) After looking at textbook treatment of Native Americans, Loewen goes on, in the fifth and sixth chapters, to illustrate the invisibility of both racism and antiracism in history textbooks. Why is this? Because the white supremacists will be offended by the suggestion that they're not perfect, and racial minorities (especially blacks) will be offended by the suggestion that racism ever existed. It still exists now! Of course it existed in the time of slavery... I found this to be a striking juxtaposition. History books can't offend. After a few chapters that I admit to not reading very well, Loewen's book ends with two chapters on the cause and effect of teaching history in such an inferior manner. The cause, mostly, seems to be textbook adoption committees. Because everyone has a personal stake in history, no one can be offended. This is why, according to Loewen, history textbooks feature the kind of "bland optimism" and intellectual simplicity that they do. Personally, I am offended by what amounts to the dumbing down of the history curriculum. To teach history as an inexorable upward march towards nirvana, following the shiny happy American path all the way, is a disservice to all students. In no other subject would such idiocy be tolerated - it's comparable to a biology textbook that avoids mention of death because eternal life is "happier". A biologist writing such a textbook would be publicly ridiculed, yet we tolerate, indeed venerate, the same behavior in history textbooks. If you've been thoroughly indoctrinated in traditional history textbooks, don't read this book unless you're prepared for a shock. It will tell you some shocking things. However, if you've totally forgotten what they told you in history class or never learned it, definitely read this book. It will give you a new perspective on both American history and the ineptitude of the educational system in our country.
Rating:
Summary: Why Do Students Hate History?
Review: James Loewen opens this book by noting that "high school students hate history," rating it last among 21 subjects in relevance. This can hardly be because people find the subject itself uninteresting--as Loewen notes, novels and movies with historical themes are extremely popular. Nonfiction histories by authors like Stephen Ambrose also sell quite well. Part of the problem with high school history, Loewen suggests, lies with textbooks that fall far short of what they could be. In this book, Loewen reviews 12 US history texts used at the high school level. The texts are typical of what most HS students see; they account for over 60% of the market. He finds a number of shortcomings common to all twelve. Space limits do not allow a complete review of his arguments here; a few illustrations will have to stand for the whole. One of the most pernicious tendencies in history texts is what Loewen calls "heroification," the process by which flesh-and-blood historical figures are transformed into "wartless stereotypes," and, I might add, extremely bland ones. Textbooks do this by consistently omitting from their profiles of people any trace of radicalism (such as Helen Keller's socialism), anything controversial (such as Woodrow Wilson's imperialist foreign policies) or any discussion of the complexity of people's opinions (such as Lincoln's views on race and slavery). A second common weakness is the failure of textbooks to adequately discuss the causes and motivations behind important events. Examples include the sources of the Northern victory in the Civil War or the reasons for the Vietnam War, both topics which deserve detailed discussion. In place of such depth, texts serve up such tripe as this account of the origins of the Vietnam War: "in the 1950's, war broke out in South Vietnam." The passage quoted above illustrates another common failing--the usage of the passive voice to avoid dealing with the responsibility of the US and its leaders for their actions. Loewen also discusses the process by which texts are written and approved, a process which he finds to contribute heavily to the vapid triumphalism that dominates texts. He identifies the pressures on textbook authors from parochial local interests and conservative pressure groups as negative factors in this process. Loewen concludes with a valuable discussion of the dangers of teaching history in a way that is devoid of meanifngul content and that shuns all controversy. His book is well written and well researched throughout. I find it instructive that, although it has stirred several resentful, angry responses, none of the 1 or 2 star reviewers, have identified a single substantive error in Loewen's book.
Rating:
Summary: Sad Really
Review: As a matter of fact, I HAVE done independent research on many of the exact questions Loewen raises, and all I can say is that occasionally he didn't go far enough. (For instance, he states that the Tigris and Euphrates area was the "seat of civilization", which is simply not true. The evidence has been available for over thirty years in the excavations of Catal Huyak, Anatolia, Vinca, and Dravidian India.) If anyone actually takes the trouble to read the book, he/she will clearly see that Loewen tries extremely hard to emphasize that he does not want to offend anybody-- only to tell the truth. So the critics of this book are frantically fleeing from reality to a degree that is really embarrassing, particularly in their desperate, nursery-school style reliance on silly name-calling.
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