This book gives a fresh look at the history text books you and I may have read (or not read, as the case may be) in high school. James Loewen examines 12 of the leading American History textbooks and looks at what they do and do not tell about American History. Loewen looks at American history and some of the biggest myths that our textbooks present as fact. When I first started reading this book I expected Loewen to examine some lies and debunk them. He does do this, but the level of detail James Loewen provides is staggering.
Here s an example: There is a chapter in this book titled The Truth About the First Thanksgiving . Loewen discusses what American children are commonly taught, about how the Pilgrims were blown off course and landed on Plymouth Rock and how the Pilgrims became friends with the Indians and that the Thanksgiving Feast has been a yearly tradition ever since that time. Loewen then reveals how much of that story is not true and backs up his case with documentation. Even when I felt that Loewen had made his case, he kept on piling more and more evidence on top of the story. It almost felt as if Loewen was going for an overkill of evidence against the textbook s version. Loewen examines various textbooks to see which ones got something right, and how many of them completely miss the mark and just parrot back the common thanksgiving myth. Loewen does the same thing on chapters on: The heroification of Woodrow Wilson and Hellen Keller, Christopher Columbus, Race History, Abraham Lincoln and John Brown, the American Indians.
This book is at its best when examining the mistruths that American History textbooks have taught us, and how they have taught us. The last couple of chapters are different, the examine how the textbooks came to be like this, and what can be done about it. This is where I began to lose interest, when Loewen began making conclusions on how textbooks should be written and how they can be fixed.
I loved this book and found it very insightful on just how much is omitted from text books and what is presented as fact that has no basis in reality. I found it striking that half of the text books Loewen examined didn t even have a bibliography, thus making it impossible to check the sources the text books may have used. I feel that everyone (Americans, at least) should read this book to see what has been misrepresented in history classes.