James W. Loewen

"Every teacher, every student of history, every citizen should read this book. It is both a refreshing antidote to what has passed for history in our educational system and a one-volume education in itself." --Howard Zinn A new edition of the national bestseller and American Book Award winner, with a new preface by the author Since its first publication in 1995, Lies My Teacher Told Me has become one of the most important--and successful--history books of our time. Having sold nearly two million copies, the book also won an American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship and was heralded on the front page of the New York Times in the summer of 2006. For this new edition, Loewen has added a new preface that shows how inadequate history courses in high school help produce adult Americans who think Donald Trump can solve their problems, and calls out academic historians for abandoning the concept of truth in a misguided effort to be "objective." 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." In Lies My Teacher Told Me, James W. Loewen brings history alive in all its complexity and ambiguity. Beginning with pre-Columbian history and ranging over characters and events as diverse as Reconstruction, Helen Keller, the first Thanksgiving, the My Lai massacre, 9/11, and the Iraq War, Loewen offers an eye-opening critique of existing textbooks, and a wonderful retelling of American history as it should--and could--be taught to American students.

Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong

Lies My Teacher Told Me

Bestselling author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, James W. Loewen, exposes the secret communities and hotbeds of racial injustice that sprung up throughout the twentieth century unnoticed, forcing us to reexamine race relations in the United States. In this groundbreaking work, bestselling sociologist James W. Loewen, author of the national bestseller Lies My Teacher Told Me, brings to light decades of hidden racial exclusion in America. In a provocative, sweeping analysis of American residential patterns, Loewen uncovers the thousands of “sundown towns”—almost exclusively white towns where it was an unspoken rule that blacks could not live there—that cropped up throughout the twentieth century, most of them located outside of the South. These towns used everything from legal formalities to violence to create homogenous Caucasian communities—and their existence has gone unexamined until now. For the first time, Loewen takes a long, hard look at the history, sociology, and continued existence of these towns, contributing an essential new chapter to the study of American race relations. Sundown Towns combines personal narrative, history, and analysis to create a readable picture of this previously unknown American institution all written with Loewen’s trademark honesty and thoroughness.

A Hidden Dimension of American Racism

Sundown Towns

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.

Everything American History Textbooks Get Wrong

Lies My Teacher Told Me for Young Readers

Examines more than one hundred sites that promote incorrect interpretations of American history and raises questions about what Americans choose to commemorate. Reprint. 75,000 first printing.

What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong

Lies Across America

Helps teachers move beyond traditional textbooks to tackle difficult but important topics in history, including conflicts with Native Americans, slavery, and race relations.

How to Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks and Get Students Excited about Doing History

Teaching what Really Happened

In this groundbreaking work, sociologist James W. Loewen, author of the classic bestseller Lies My Teacher Told Me, brings to light decades of hidden racial exclusion in America. In a provocative, sweeping analysis of American residential patterns, Loewen uncovers the thousands of 'sundown towns' - almost exclusively white towns where it was an unspoken rule that blacks weren't welcome - that cropped up throughout the twentieth century, most of them located outside of the South.

Edward H. Sebesta

"This important and persuasive book explodes the myths surrounding slavery, secession, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader should be required reading for classroom teachers. It deals with crucial events in this nation's history---and it is as current as today's news."---John Dittmer, author of Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi and The Good Doctors: The Medical Committee for Human Rights and the Struggle for Social Justice in Health Care "This collection of documents associated with the history and memory of the times and events that led to the creation of the Southern Confederacy is an impressive educational tool for understanding and appreciating the pivotal period of the Civil War. The valuable historical data contained in these pages, taken from the words of those who created and influenced the critical events of the time, provide a striking understanding of the development and complexity of the Confederate ideology before, during, and after the Civil War. This book also traces the evolving historical interpretation of that most critically important period of national history and its impact upon present-day perceptions of the Civil War era."---James Oliver Horton, author of The Landmarks of African American History and co-editor of Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory "This is a fantastic collection of essential documents that I wish I'd had way back in my student days. It would have saved me many years of stumbling across them in piecemeal fashion. Their broad sweep gives the reader a good sense of the Confederacy's foundations and a firm notion of why many of why many of the issues that brought it into being are still with us today."---Harold D. Williams, author of A People's History of the Civil War: Struggles for the Meaning of Freedom and Bitterly Divided: The South's Inner Civil War "This is The book we've all been needing out here! And what a great team to put it together."---Monroe Gilmour, Coordinator, Western North Carolina Citizens for an End to Institutional Bigotry

The "great Truth" about the "lost Cause"

The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader

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.

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Young Readers’ Edition

Charles Sallis

SUMMARY: A textbook which traces the history of Mississippi from prehistoric times until today, covering all areas of social life and concentrating on recent developments, especially the civil rights struggle and the search for social justice.

Mississippi: Conflict & Change

Most Americans hold basic misconceptions about the Confederacy, the Civil War, and the actions of subsequent neo-Confederates. For example, two thirds of Americans—including most history teachers—think the Confederate States seceded for “states’ rights.” This error persists because most have never read the key documents about the Confederacy. These documents have always been there. When South Carolina seceded, it published “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union.” The document actually opposes states’ rights. Its authors argue that Northern states were ignoring the rights of slave owners as identified by Congress and in the Constitution. Similarly, Mississippi’s “Declaration of the Immediate Causes …” says, “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world.” Later documents in this collection show how neo-Confederates obfuscated this truth, starting around 1890. The evidence also points to the centrality of race in neo-Confederate thought even today and to the continuing importance of neo-Confederate ideas in American political life. The 150th anniversary of secession and civil war provides a moment for all Americans to read these documents, properly set in context by award-winning sociologist and historian James W. Loewen and co-editor, Edward H. Sebesta, to put in perspective the mythology of the Old South.

The "Great Truth" about the "Lost Cause"

This scholarly, carefully researched book studies one of the most overlooked minority groups in Americathe Chinese of the Mississippi Delta. During Reconstruction, white plantation owners imported Chinese sharecroppers in the hope of replacing their black laborers. In the beginning they were classed with blacks. But the Chinese soon moved into the towns and became almost without exception, owners of small groceries. Loewen details their astounding transition from black to essentially white status with an insight seldom found in studies of race relationships in the Deep South.

Between Black and White, Second Edition

The Mississippi Chinese

Rivers are good metaphors for life, and paddling for living. In this little book, Loewen skilfully makes these connections without sermonising, resulting in nuggets of wisdom about how to live, how to act meaningfully, and perhaps how to die. Loewen also returns to his life s work and gently addresses the origins of racism and inequality, the theory of history, confronting institutional dishonesty, but mostly, as in his life, he finds rueful humour in every canoeing fiasco and he has had many!

James W. Loewen

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