Rating: 
Summary: Mixed feelings - good insights, but dragged out too long
Review: I bought this book expecting to love it. "Lies my teacher told me" was fascinating, and I always enjoy a poke in the eye of the establishment. Initially the book delivered on the promise. It educated me about the falacy of many facts presented as local history, and explained the context in which they were done. That theory alone made the book a worth purchase.Unfortunately, things slowed as the book hit the Southern States. Virtually every article turned into slaveholder bashing and an assault on the Daughters of the Confederacy. While this was all historically accurate, and warranted, the obsession of the South's sins really pushed the book to the limits of readability. After 5 or 6 examples, I know that history was re-written to glorify the Confederates. I don't need twenty. In the end, I just couldn't finish it. The topics were interesting, but the lessons became repetive and ran out of gas about 80 pages from the end. I come away conflicted, as the approach of questioning history really is valuable. Perhaps if the book was titled, "Lies about Reconstruction" it would have prepared me for the long slow slog.
Rating:
Summary: Mixed feelings - good insights, but dragged out too long
Review: I bought this book expecting to love it. "Lies my teacher told me" was fascinating, and I always enjoy a poke in the eye of the establishment. Initially the book delivered on the promise. It educated me about the falacy of many facts presented as local history, and explained the context in which they were done. That theory alone made the book a worth purchase. Unfortunately, things slowed as the book hit the Southern States. Virtually every article turned into slaveholder bashing and an assault on the Daughters of the Confederacy. While this was all historically accurate, and warranted, the obsession of the South's sins really pushed the book to the limits of readability. After 5 or 6 examples, I know that history was re-written to glorify the Confederates. I don't need twenty. In the end, I just couldn't finish it. The topics were interesting, but the lessons became repetive and ran out of gas about 80 pages from the end. I come away conflicted, as the approach of questioning history really is valuable. Perhaps if the book was titled, "Lies about Reconstruction" it would have prepared me for the long slow slog.
Rating:
Summary: Five stars for emotional response; two stars for neutrality
Review: I enjoy reading about American History, so I enjoyed reading this book. This book is organized as a series of 95 "entries" referring to specific markers. Chances are that any given person will find some interesting, some very interesting, and some irrelevant. I also greatly respect Loewen's emphasis on the truth. However, I found many parts of this book overly pretentious and over political; politicizing issues that I find outright trivial. I for one, knew that Mt McKinley was not the original Native American name for that mountain in Alaska, but Loewen (among others) has turned the issue of the name of a piece of rock into political crusade that frankly in my opinion, misses the point. While I will be the first to acknowledge that many groups have been wronged in American History, in my opinion, going over the American landscape with a fine tuned comb of political correctness is about as productive as a hypothetical "Saxon revivalist movement" (remember 1066?) would be in modern England. On the other hand, this book does have many good points, such as understanding why people like Nathan Bedford Forrest are represented on the landscape (in that particular case, his ties with the KKK). This doesn't fall into the above category because understanding the issue provides one with a better understanding of history, and does not boil down to a mere feelgood issue. In general, if one keeps an open mind, one will enjoy this book. You don't have to agree with everything that Loewen says, but chances are that you will agree with part of what he says in some cases.
Rating: 
Summary: Is "Lie" Too Strong of a Word?
Review: I often think "lie is too strong of a word. In reading history, whether ancient or modern, one gets use to the prejudices of the writer. Ancient Assyrian palaces bent the facts for propaganda purposes. The Egyptian version of the treaty with the Hittites and the Hittite version are both still extant and both portray a different view of the Battle of Kadesh and what it meant.
In this sequel to _Lies My Teacher Told Me_, James Loewen continues his study of the monuments and other artifacts by which we remember our past. He begins with the western side of the US because, contrary to Euro-centricism, that is the side of the US for which there were first immigrants. They came across the Siberian Strait. Likewise Loewen writes that there are more tourists that come to the West Coast than than the East Coast.
I want to balk that not all of the cases which Loewen presents actually represent attempts to purposefully deceive someone else. For example, I don't think anyone in Pittsburg, Texas, really believes that the Ezekiel Airship was an airborne airship before Kitty Hawk. However I cannot vouch the same for all of the monuments that Loewen mentions. Moreover quite often I am inclined to agree with him that the purpose of a certain moument was not only to mislead its reader but to create an alternative fiction. That I would call a "lie."
"Lie" is a strong word, especially with regard to history. I think Loewen has found lies about who we have been and who we are. Perhaps the best part of this book is that Loewen offers us ways to identify these errors.
Rating:
Summary: Is "Lie" Too Strong of a Word?
Review: I often think "lie is too strong of a word. In reading history, whether ancient or modern, one gets use to the prejudices of the writer. Ancient Assyrian palaces bent the facts for propaganda purposes. The Egyptian version of the treaty with the Hittites and the Hittite version are both still extant and both portray a different view of the Battle of Kadesh and what it meant.
In this sequel to _Lies My Teacher Told Me_, James Loewen continues his study of the monuments and other artifacts by which we remember our past. He begins with the western side of the US because, contrary to Euro-centricism, that is the side of the US for which there were first immigrants. They came across the Siberian Strait. Likewise Loewen writes that there are more tourists that come to the West Coast than than the East Coast.
I want to balk that not all of the cases which Loewen presents actually represent attempts to purposefully deceive someone else. For example, I don't think anyone in Pittsburg, Texas, really believes that the Ezekiel Airship was an airborne airship before Kitty Hawk. However I cannot vouch the same for all of the monuments that Loewen mentions. Moreover quite often I am inclined to agree with him that the purpose of a certain moument was not only to mislead its reader but to create an alternative fiction. That I would call a "lie."
"Lie" is a strong word, especially with regard to history. I think Loewen has found lies about who we have been and who we are. Perhaps the best part of this book is that Loewen offers us ways to identify these errors.
Rating:
Summary: What a wonderful suprise.
Review: I received this book as a Christmas gift from two friends in 2000 and, to be honest, was not that excited about it. Not surprisingly then, it sat on my bookshelf for almost a year and a half. How stupid of me... The odds were against me liking the book. Not only had I not picked up a book on American History since my sophomore year in college 12 years ago, but I am a slow reader with a short attention span. So what a wonderful surprise when the book totally captivated me. It's an easy, quick read - even for a slow poke like me because the essays are usually pretty short. But most importantly, it enthralled me by providing the often shocking background to the historical events that had been "sterilized" in my history classes. Indeed this was also Loewen's mission in his previous book, "Lies My Teacher Told Me" - which I ordered from Amazon immediately after finishing this book (and also loved, but probably not as much as this one...). This book moved me to shock, disbelief and often disgust in the way some Americans have presented history. I feel much more informed about the events covered and better able to interpret historical events thanks the method suggested by the author. I'm not a history expert by any stretch so I can't say if this is a great book for history enthusiasts. But for a "layman" like me, I thought it was one of the best I've read on any subject. Of course, I have since profusely thanked the friends who gave me the book as a gift.
Rating:
Summary: Loewen wins the battles and loses the war.
Review: I think the best way to explain my reaction to this book is to describe a similar reaction I've had to some recent television commercials. I'm not a smoker and I never have been. I think smoking kills people and I don't like it when people smoke cigarettes around me. That being said, whenever I see one of those smug, self-righteous anti-tobacco commercials from thetruth.com there's nothing I want to do more than smoke my way through a whole pack and then pass out cartons of cigarettes to everyone I meet. The very positive message of the ads is destroyed by the delivery. Well, Loewen evoked the same response in me with Lies Across America. It's a good book, thorough and well-researched, yet easy to read. Loewen points out the distortions of our nation's history in monuments and historical markers around the country. As he clearly demonstrates, many of these are nothing more than propaganda, mythology, and apologism -- and more than a few describe events that never actually occurred. I found myself in total agreement with Loewen about the foolishness of Europeans "discovering" various parts of America, about Columbus "proving the world was round", and about the white-washing of a number of men who were admittedly pretty bad. And yet I found myself hoping that all those misleading monuments remained untouched and as is, if only to throw it back in the face of this sanctimonious, holier-than-thou jerk. This is not the kind of response a book like this should generate. Loewen has a mission, which is to inject at least a little bit more of the real story into the way history is presented today. A book that aims in part to convert people to a new way of looking at something should definitely *not* be grating, self-righteous, and irritating. So I give the book five stars for tackling an important topic, making some very important points, and for being thoroughly researched yet accessible. I'm forced to subtract two stars because I found Loewen's delivery so annoying that I didn't care whether he was right or not -- I just wanted to be against whatever he was for. Definitely worth a read, but try to focus on the message and not the presentation.
Rating: 
Summary: Intriguing premise but seriously flawed execution.
Review: In "Lies Across America", James Loewen raises some intriguing questions about the manner in which historic sites are presented to the public. The central point that he raises seems to be that the presentation of historic sites often reflects local and regional prejudices and biases rather than the unvarnished historical record. He also points out how many sites attempt to sanitize or downplay various unattractive aspects of American history, particularly those dealing with slavery or the treatment of Native Americans. However, Loewen's book is far more of self-righteous polemic than a balanced historiographical work. The entire book is based upon the presumptive existence of a single, precisely quantifiable entity known as "historical truth". If a site is not telling the historical "truth" as Loewen understands it, than it is telling "lies". He makes no allowance for the extreme subjectivity of the historical field which allows different historians to examine the same pieces of evidence and reach radically different (but equally valid) conclusions. Most historians understand that this inherent subjectivity does not mean that we should stop trying to interpret the past by examining the fragmentary evidence available to us, but rather that our conclusions should be tempered with the understanding that our knowledge of past lives and event will always be imperfect. For those who make pronouncements about the past, a degree of humility is appropriate. Loewen, however, does not have one ounce of such humility. This may be because he is more of a polemicist than an historian. His writing has the breezy, from the hip, expose style commonly found in the magazine sections of local Sunday newspapers. He is given to constantly making sweeping generalizations which he attempts to back up with selective (and sometimes misleading) use of historical citations. The many "gray areas" of history appear to be of little interest to Loewen, perhaps because they do not lend themselves well to the sort of simpilistic comments and sweeping generalizations that he prefers. For him, the past is painted in stark tones of black and white.
Loewen particularly focuses upon attacking the so-called "great white men" approach to American History which he discusses as if it were still the unchallenged norm. One wonders if he is aware that focus on the historical role of formerly disencfranchised groups has been the dominant trend in universities and in textbooks for the past thirty years. It is rather tiresome that Mr. Loewen affects the role of a lonely and bold Jerimiah crying out in the wilderness for change in the way that American history is presented when he is, in fact, repeating what has been the approved party line of the history establishment for many years. Finally, and most egregiously, the title of this book betrays the author's arrogance or ignorance (or perhaps both). A "lie" is a knowing and intentional falsehood. For Mr. Loewen to refer to any historical statement or interpretation with which he disagrees as a "lie" is utterly preposterous and dismisses this entire book from any pretension to serious value. Perhaps some day, a genuine historian will write a book examining in a fair and insightful manner the question of how the presentation of America's historic sites reflects local and regional biases and prejudices. "Lies Across America" is most definitely not that book.
Rating: 
Summary: Feel- Good History is all Around Us
Review: James Loewen is an academic scholar who feels very strongly about the misinformation presented at places of historical significance. This book presents a listing of ninety- five historic sites, historic parks, and historic markers that don't quite get the story correct. Arranged in the book from west to east, each state in the U.S. includes at least one listing and some states have several. They all have one thing in common: They either lie outright or they present misleading information about what took place.
Even though this book is titled "Lies Across America" the truth is that most of the places presented in this book are not necessarily giving out false information to tourists. Rather, they are failing to tell both sides of the story. The themes most commonly mentioned in the passages of this book are those that de-emphasize the role of Native Americans in the settling of the North American continent; fail to mention the bad treatment of African Americans; or that fail to tell the truth about the role of the Confederate and Union leaders in the Civil War. These historic places tend to explain things in a mostly positive way, leaving out anything bad in order to make people feel better about a person or place or to avoid controversy.
Loewen has some interesting facts to share about different historic sites around the country, and some of the things you will read in this book will surprise you. He feels that the negative and/or controversial facts, even if they don't sound good, should still be presented in their entirety. Historic sites shouldn't try to hide the truth- they should let the facts be known to all.
This book presents some good history lessons about some of the forgotten moments in U.S. history. Loewen writes in a clear manner, but I really wish he would refrain from using so many exclamation marks. On most every page of this book, he has an exclamation mark someplace. Maybe he is just so fascinated with his own work that he can't help himself. But I really wish he would refrain from his tendency to shout.
History majors and other lovers of the past will enjoy this book most. It does get a little carried away with topics about the Civil War and coverage of oppressed groups of people. But I still think it's a good book with some important information for all to read. What we hear is not always the full truth, and Loewen wants this to change.
Rating:
Summary: A Supplement to Guidebooks and More
Review: Loewen's book is a critique of the American impulse to commemorate and to honor. Nearly all the markers or historic sites mentioned in this book are disturbingly flawed in some way. Here you can find the history that is ~not~ inscribed in bronze. He reveals some surprising facts: Beaufort, South Carolina was not burned by the Federals but by retreating Confederates; people didn't believe the world was flat in 1492; and President James Buchanan was probably gay. His is a strong case for historical accuracy against a very old call for political correctness masking as "tradition" and against the coveting of profitable fame at the expense of the truth. One of the concluding essays in the book discusses the author's top ten candidates for "toppling". It is Loewen's hope that you will read the markers in your community more carefully and, perhaps, do something to make sure that the facts are properly recorded for future generations.
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