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1.04k reviews for:
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
James W. Loewen
4.04 AVERAGE
1.04k reviews for:
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
James W. Loewen
4.04 AVERAGE
This book was different from what I expected it to be. At first it was informative about history, and then it became a critique of history textbooks themselves. Still interesting, but became repetitive and I feel like this book could have been shorter and more impactful.
adventurous
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
I don’t think my teachers lied to me. Of course, there’s a lot of history to cover, and you can’t trust your textbooks.
informative
reflective
This book started out interesting and informative. The other lays out not so much specific mistruths, but rather structural ways education is skewed. This is done with some historical information and source information. Towards the end, the points became repetitive and less easy to read through. The last few chapters are points that have been made throughout the other chapters, woven into the arguments laid out at that time and are belabored in the final chapters.
Overall, a good reminder to question and review the writer and background if where information is coming from and what the intent is in the writing.
Overall, a good reminder to question and review the writer and background if where information is coming from and what the intent is in the writing.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
slow-paced
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Misogyny, Racism, Sexism, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Religious bigotry, Colonisation, War, Injury/Injury detail, Classism
I was never interested in history while in school. I didn’t take a single history class in college. But over the last 3 years, I’ve learned the vast importance of understanding human history and how it shapes our present. (Thank you DJT for making me hate listening to NPR and switch to audiobooks instead). This book explains more than a dozen specific topics & themes high school history books intentionally leave out and the indoctrinating philosophies injected into them (spoiler alert: it’s white ethnocentrism, Eurocentrism, sexism, class erasure, and nationalism). It also explains why the corporations who “write” these books have a vested interest in making them terrible for students. I STRONGLY implore every teacher read this book. I also very much recommend every current or former student who found history boring to read this book to understand why, and learn what you missed.
Highly Recommend
Highly Recommend
informative
reflective
slow-paced
It makes sense why Loewen, a historian and author of history textbooks spend so much of the book reviewing and referencing and citing the eighteen history books he’s critiquing for this work.
But I, as someone who isn’t going to write or use a history textbook again would have less of that content. I simply wanted to learn about the history that isn’t taught in high school. Reading through many wrong quotes and passages, of course presented to make the case of how bad the presentation is in these books, probably makes for readers accidentally recalling the wrong bits as well as the better historical perspective Loewen provides.
It was still interesting, but also as someone who has spent time deconstructing what I learned in school and seeing out lifelong learning resources like this (or the whole back catalog of the Behind the Bastards podcast) there was little truly novel.
But I, as someone who isn’t going to write or use a history textbook again would have less of that content. I simply wanted to learn about the history that isn’t taught in high school. Reading through many wrong quotes and passages, of course presented to make the case of how bad the presentation is in these books, probably makes for readers accidentally recalling the wrong bits as well as the better historical perspective Loewen provides.
It was still interesting, but also as someone who has spent time deconstructing what I learned in school and seeing out lifelong learning resources like this (or the whole back catalog of the Behind the Bastards podcast) there was little truly novel.
Rounded up from 3.5 stars. I enjoyed learning more about these events in history! I always knew that many of these elements are left out of high school curriculum because people want a "happy" American history class, but as it turns out, students want to know the reality of it. We need to encourage students to think about and analyze historical events instead of being told "here's how it happened; isn't America always great?" Realizing that we could have and should have handled events differently is the only way to improve ourselves as a nation.
medium-paced