Lies My Teacher Told Me

James W. Loewen

Do American history textbooks give distorted and incomplete accounts of the past, and what do they leave out and why?

At a glance

You will learn to ask who is left out whenever a school, museum or monument tells you about the past
You will stop assuming a school history book is accurate just because a committee approved it
You will stop taking a tidy hero story as the whole truth about a person or event

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Preface: Lies My Teacher Told Me in the Age of Alternative Facts
Introduction to the Second Edition
Introduction: Something Has Gone Very Wrong
1. Handicapped by History: The Process of Hero-making
2. 1493: The True Importance of Christopher Columbus
3. The Truth About the First Thanksgiving
4. Red Eyes
5. “Gone With the Wind”: The Invisibility of Racism in American History Textbooks
6. John Brown and Abraham Lincoln: The Invisibility of Antiracism in American History Textbooks
7. The Land of Opportunity
8. Watching Big Brother: What Textbooks Teach About the Federal Government
9. See No Evil: Choosing Not to Look at the War in Vietnam
10. Down the Memory Hole: The Disappearance of the Recent Past
11. Progress Is Our Most Important Product
12. Why Is History Taught Like This?
13. What Is the Result of Teaching History Like This?
Afterword: The Future Lies Ahead—and What to Do About Them
APPENDIX