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Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, Revised and Updated Edition |
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List Price: $26.95
Our Price: $17.79
Your Save: $ 9.16 ( 34% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: New Press
Average Customer Rating:  
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PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 973
EAN: 9781595583260
ISBN: 1595583262
Label: New Press
Manufacturer: New Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 464
Publication Date: 2008-04-01
Publisher: New Press
Studio: New Press
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Editorial Reviews:
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The national bestseller and winner of the American Book Award, thoroughly updated for the first time since its initial publication to include textbooks written since 2000 and featuring a new chapter on what textbooks get wrong about 9/11 and Iraq.
Since its initial publication in 1995, Lies My Teacher Told Me has gone on to win an American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship, and to sell one million copies in its various editions.
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" beginning with the pre-Columbian period and ranging over characters and events as diverse as Reconstruction, Helen Keller, the first Thanksgiving, and the My Lai massacre.
In this revised and updated edition, James Loewen surveys six new high school history textbooks written since the first edition of Lies was published. In his inimitable style, he adds material to each chapter noting where the new books have gotten more accurate and where they are still fatally flawed. Loewen also writes at length about the way these textbooks treat the 2001 terrorist attacks and our "response" in Iraq. In fact, while researching this new edition Loewen made the front page of the New York Times in 2006 when he discovered that publishers were passing off as original virtually identical passages on important recent events in a number of history books. And in yet another example of the failure of American history textbooks, he found that "celebrity" historians whose names appear as authors in some cases have never read, let alone written, the texts attributed to them.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Just Say Know
Comment: Our education system continues to Dumb Down. Knowing the past is key to not repeating mistakes and growing as a society. Someone should have sent this book to Bush/Cheney. It may not have helped but could not have hurt.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Read it!!!!!!
Comment: This book is so amazing and I recommend it for any person wanting to know some truths about our history. I am a Native American and to read some of Christopher Columbus' journals is appalling. There is an enormous amount of information in this book and as a teacher I think that it's an injustice to keep this to myself.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Overrates the importance of textbooks
Comment: Don't waste your time on this book. It has little new information, especially for history teachers. It is pretty much a standard revisionist rehash. It vastly overrates the importance of using textbooks in the classroom. Most modern history teachers are not married to the textbook anymore. The author assumes that teachers are stuck in an outmoded method of instruction where teachers just teach out of the textbook every day. It ignores innovative teachers that use primary source readings, simulations, films, debates, projects, class discussions, etc. When was the last time the author actually stuck his head in a classroom to see what is going on today?
Customer Rating:
Summary: A mixed bag
Comment: This book certainly has some important points, and much of it is interesting and informative. The central premise that our textbooks are biased to color history is well supported. However, as one can surmise from the less glowing reviews, the author rants way too much, and much of the book is repeating the same point over and over. By the end of the book, I was quite ill from the hurling of pieties from the mountain.
Customer Rating:
Summary: I have never had a book have such a profound impact on me
Comment: This book is a must read. After finishing this book I immediately bought several copies for friends and relatives. I was outraged to find just how much I have been lied to and how these lies and omissions have changed my world view. This was an eye opener.
I can not praise this book enough.
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