Loewen, the bestselling and award-winning author of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, died on August 19 following a long illness.

Although our society is now wracked by a divisive debate about the teaching of history, and by efforts to return to a curriculum based on heroic narratives of national greatness and American exceptionalism, James Loewen contributed greatly to efforts to replace mythmaking with a curriculum based in documentary evidence and student inquiry. There is no doubt that he saw that effort as an ongoing battle.

Loewen to public understanding of history, and to the movement to teach inclusive and honest versions of the past. It is with great sadness that we honor the contributions of James W. Whether one deems our present society wondrous or awful or both, history reveals how we got to this point.” More than any other topic, it is about us. 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.“History is important. Loewen brings history alive in all its complexity and ambiguity. 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. 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.įor 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.'

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.

It is both a refreshing antidote to what has passed for history in our educational system and a one-volume education in itself.'Ī new edition of the national bestseller and American Book Award winner, with a new preface by the author 'Every teacher, every student of history, every citizen should read this book.

James loewen author