Lies My Teacher Told Me: Young Readers' Edition: Everything American History Textbooks Get Wrong

by James W. Loewen, Rebecca Stefoff (Adapted by)

Overview

Now adapted for young readers ages 12 through 18, the national bestseller that makes real American history come alive in all of its conflict, drama, and complexity

Lies My Teacher Told Me is one of the most important—and successful—history books of our time. Having sold nearly two million copies, the book won an American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship. Now Rebecca Stefoff, the acclaimed nonfiction children's writer who adapted Howard Zinn's bestseller A People's History of the United States for young readers, makes Loewen's beloved work available to younger students.

Essential reading in our age of fake news and slippery, sloppy history, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Young Readers' Edition cuts through the mindless optimism and outright lies found in most textbooks that are often not even really written by their "authors." Loewen is, as historian Carol Kammen has said, the history teacher we all should have had. Beginning with pre-Columbian history and then covering characters and events as diverse as the first Thanksgiving, Helen Keller, the My Lai massacre, 9/11, and the Iraq War, Loewen's lively, provocative telling of American history is a "counter-textbook that retells the story of the American past" (The Nation).

This streamlined young readers' edition is rich in vivid details and quotations from primary sources that poke holes in the textbook versions of history and help students develop a deeper understanding of our world. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Young Readers' Edition brings this classic text to a new generation of readers (and their parents and teachers) who will welcome and value its honesty, its humor, and its integrity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620974698
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	04/23/2019
Edition description:	Young Readers' ed.
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	143,679
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

James W. Loewen is the bestselling and award-winning author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, Lies Across America, Lies My Teacher Told Me About Christopher Columbus, Sundown Towns, and Lies My Teacher Told Me: Young Readers' Edition (all from The New Press). He also wrote Teaching What Really Happened and The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White and edited The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader. He has won the American Book Award, the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship, the Spirit of America Award from the National Council for the Social Studies, and the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award. Loewen is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Vermont and lives in Washington, DC.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Why I Wrote This Book-And Other Questions Answered ix

List Of Textbooks Studied xvii

1 The Problem With Making Heroes 1

2 What Did Columbus Really Do? 17

3 The Truth About The First Thanksgiving 45

4 Through Red Eyes 68

5 Invisible Racism 99

6 John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, And Invisible Idealism 127

7 The Land Of Opportunity 151

8 Keeping An Eye On The Government 160

9 Seeing No Evil In Vietnam 178

10 The Disappearance Of The Recent Past 192

11 History And The Future 206

12 Does This Way Of Teaching History Work? 225

Afterword: The Future Lies Ahead-And What To Do About Them 237

Notes 247

Index 269

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Lies My Teacher Told Me: Young Readers' Edition:

Named one of the "Ultimate Guidebooks for LBGTQ+ Youth in 2019" by the Advocate

"LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME: YOUNG READERS' EDITION is the perfect gift to help the young historian enthusiast get woke with the facts rather than a fictitious narrative."—The Advocate

"[The book] not only imparts vital history left out of textbooks, it also prepares the next generation to be critical readers of the media."
—Rethinking Schools

"Evocative and thought-provoking, this is what history should be."
—Booklist

"Accessible, eye-opening. . . . A cogent argument for studying historical nuances. [Loewen] argues that young people should not be deprived of hearing the incredible truth of American history in service to avoidance of controversy or blinkered, parochial nationalism."
—Kirkus Reviews

"Powerful . . . it serves as a crucial counter-textbook to provide a more realistic and critical narrative about the American past."
—Truthdig

"Here is a call to action that will have students furiously turning the pages and inspire them to question everything. Young people: Read this book, and then talk back to your history teacher!"
—Jesse Hagopian, co-editor of Teaching for Black Lives and high school history teacher

"Lies My Teacher Told Me was a big inspiration to me as a young writer, and I'm excited to see this new young readers' edition. Loewen's fascinating book is full of little-known stories, debunked myths, provocative ideas—and, best of all, it challenges readers to think for themselves!"
—Steve Sheinkin, author of Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War

"The young readers' edition of James Loewen's classic text Lies My Teacher Told Me imparts vital history in a thoroughly engaging way. Countless teachers have tossed their textbooks aside after reading Lies My Teacher Told Me and now younger readers will be able to learn the truth about history, including race, land, the climate, foreign policy, political leadership and much, much more."
—Deborah Menkart, executive director, Teaching for Change, and co-director, Zinn Education Project

"True stories—otherwise known as history—need to be told transparently, in all their messy, marvelous, multi-faceted glory. Loewen's Lies tells the truth to young readers, creating a new crop of critical thinkers and active citizens."
—Tanya Lee Stone, NAACP Image Award winner and Sibert medalist

"James Loewen's book is a lively and trustworthy guide to what's wrong with the way we teach history, starting with the textbooks we ask our students to read in school. That students find him irresistible is not hard to explain. Loewen himself is forever young at heart: energetic, curious, skeptical, irreverent, and yet deeply idealistic. Artfully adapted for young readers by Rebecca Stefoff, the text has not been dumbed down one bit."
—James Goodman, professor of history at Rutgers University, Newark, and Pulitzer Prize finalist

From the Publisher

05/01/2019

Gr 7 Up—The original 1995 edition of Lies My Teacher Told Me shocked many readers with its blunt analysis of 12 high school history textbooks. This young reader's edition continues along the same lines, pointing out the fallacies involved when telling adolescents an idealized, incomplete version of U.S. history. Loewen focuses on the following themes: heroification (telling only the positive, exemplary parts about significant figures in American history), the realities of both the Columbus and First Thanksgiving stories, Native/First Nations experiences being ignored or told only from a European perspective, racism, idealism, classism, government 'perfection,' and the dangers of teaching history without considering its impact on the future. The book covers much of the same material as in the previous editions except with shortened, simpler text. Relevant facts and figures have been updated, as well as references to the current president and administration. VERDICT An important and necessary purchase for all secondary schools who want students to develop a love and appreciation for U.S. history while seeing it with clearer eyes.—Heidi Grange, Summit Elementary School, Smithfield, UT

School Library Journal

2019-02-18

A slimmed-down version of Loewen's (Sundown Towns, 2018, etc.) damning indictment of the way United States history is taught.

As in the adult edition, the author bases his argument on critical examinations of 18 high school textbooks published between 1974 and 2007. He sees clear tendencies to blandly hero-ify not only historical figures—such as Helen Keller, commonly presented in relation to her disabilities, not for her lifelong social and political radicalism—but also American culture and government, which are consistently portrayed as international forces for good despite centuries of invasion-based foreign policy. To freshen his material, the author slips in more recent statistics and general comments that newer textbooks seem to have filled in at least some of the more egregious gaps. More provocatively, he also flings down a gauntlet to young readers by not reproducing two of the five photos he discusses as iconic images of the war in Vietnam, arguing that they are still too edgy for some school districts. He also offers alternative narratives about the conflicts between European immigrants and Indigenous residents, slavery, racism, social class, and the ideal of "progress." Overall, he presents a cogent argument for studying historical nuances. He argues that young people should not be deprived of hearing the incredible truth of American history in service to avoidance of controversy or blinkered, parochial nationalism.

An accessible, eye-opening invitation to look for hidden—and not-so-hidden—agendas in supposedly authoritative sources. (notes, index) (Nonfiction. 13-18)

Kirkus Reviews