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Summary: This is an important book.
Review: Finally, a book that makes American history interesting, only because it tells the truth! Some conservatives may criticize this book only because it dispels the false and harmful notion that this country was built primarily on the effort and intelligence of white men with honorable intentions. The book doesn't have any political agenda except to tell the truth. The author gives a realistic portrait, based on primary sources, of what has really happened in our country, the motives of the main players, and how those past events affect the way we live and view our country now. And plus the accounts in the book are riveting, sometimes heartbreaking, and give insight as to how historians actually study and draw conclusions about history. This book is definitely an exciting read that has kept me up at night trying to fend off sleep, itching the next day to tell my friends of what I've learned.
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Summary: Every American should read this book
Review: I actually learned American history through one of the textbooks that Loewen criticized. No wonder I found American history so boring, and as a non-white American, so excluding. Some may claim that Loewen has some "liberal" agenda. His only agenda it seems is to tell the comprehensive truth, and to expose the lies and falsehoods of the "conservative" agenda, whose promoters seem to want to keep up the illusion that this country was built on purely honorable motives and solely through the efforts of Western European descendants. For anyone who steadfastly holds to the idea that American history should help us love our country, ask yourself, what does it mean to truly love something? Does that mean to love through some blind devotion to myths and "heroes" whose faults we shove under the rug? Or to love by learning the truth and using that knowledge to make connections between the past and present so that we may make our country better today for all?
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Summary: A solution to voter apathy
Review: After many years of debate, the question of how to resolve American voter apathy is at hand! First, make reading this book mandatory for anyone who wants to vote. Second, make reading this book mandatory for anyone who would prefer NOT to vote. Finally, make reading this book mandatory for anyone who chooses to express an opinion about government or politics.This book challenged so many assumptions I unknowingly brought to bear that it was sometimes overwhelming and often exhilirating. The book rings with honesty and candor; it manages to be thoughtful and provocative without ever being pedantic or condescending. After thirty years of reading, I have a pantheon of books I consider best of class. Of the many hundreds of books I keep, the pantheon contains five volumes. "Lies my teacher told me" is the sixth.
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Summary: exposing the agenda behind history textbook errors
Review: First off, let me say that I loved this book because I love history, and I love seeing myths debunked and hidden agendas exposed, and controversy has never been a deterrent for me. That said, I hope you get the feeling this is not a book that everyone will love - it will wrankle some feathers because many will find their comfortable sterotypes exposed as heroic cardboard cut-outs obscuring real 3-dimensional people with egos, flaws, and ulterior motives. It is a fascinating look at history textbook errors through the eyes of a history professor who has learned that the motives of the author or publisher may affect the content of a history book far more than historical facts. The surprising part, to me, is how open the secret agenda of high-school textbook publishers really is. And this is really the crux of the matter - not the fact that Helen Keller was a socialist, or Woodrow Wilson was a white supremacist, or Columbus thought nothing of torture or genocide to accomplish his ambitions. Of course, for textbook publishers, the profit motive is first and foremost, but related to it is this issue of building better citizens by means of propaganda which inspires loyalty. Textbook publishers seem to feel that history books are to incite young folks to fervent chauvenism, and truth and historical fact are expendable commodities in this noble quest. They openly admit that historical truth is not their objective! To me, this admission reverberates through the entire book, through the entire grade-school curriculum, through all of our collective memories and perceptions of the foundation teachings of our youth. Another very important issue this book confronts is the school textbook's negation of the cause/effect principle in human history, the unwillingness to look for reasons for unrest or protest or reactionary violence. Textbooks present history as a one-dimensional linear march of "great" men who just keep making the world better and better. The reality that is glossed over is that history is a complex series of power-shifts and reactions to a rich milieu of varied stimulants, and it is pointless to analyze an event or attitude without looking for the social/historical realities that spawned it. The book is filled with fascinating revisions of those trite historical stereotypes we all grew up with, and for this, and for the author's passion for his subject matter, I rate it a 5. However, it does have some flaws worth mentioning, to wit: It is heavily slanted toward Native American revisionism, whereas it does not deal with the overall subject in a balanced spectrum, and the language is sometimes overly stiff and scholarly (keep the dictionary handy while reading this one!). Like many, many others, I grew up thinking history was boring. What this book shows is that it's only the neutered, decaffeinated, lobotomized, sanitized, liposuctioned and implant-enhanced version that will bore you to tears - the dirt reality is as gripping and fascinating as Real Life with all it's warts showing, for after all, isn't that what history is REALLY made of?
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Summary: A must for students and teachers of U. S. History
Review: I won't lie, I love to read about American history. Lowen gives a witty and informative account of everything your U.S. History teacher got wrong. But it is not the teacher's fault...This book would also make a great aid to term papers, and a great conversation piece about what really happened the first Thanksgiving while you are carving the turkey. A really good read!
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Summary: Sound treatment of a serious issue
Review: Skimming over some of the many critical reviews of this book, it seems obvious that they prove at least one point Loewen is attempting to make. In sum, most of the criticisms lambast the author's "revisionism," "left or liberal agenda" and his attack on "national pride" or the "American ideal." (I also having a sneaking suspicion that if Loewen wrote a book that deconstructs the way that Iraq, Cuba or China present their history to youngsters all the same reviewers would give it 5-star ratings.) One of Loewen's central arguments is that history as an academic subject should NOT be about instilling patriotism or 'national pride' but critically analyzing past events - this does not necessarily mean the objective truth will ever be determined, as any honest university history professor will tell you. The negative reviews here show that those who did actually pay attention during their high school history classes were in fact imbued with a sense of national pride and a "correct" way of viewing U.S. history. This is why they object so much to Loewen's "revisionism," meaning his critical and honest treatment of the Christopher Columbus myth or his use of the Helen Keller example to show that the U.S. once had a strong, lively and popular socialist/worker's/social justice movement. Not that I agree with all of the gushing positive reviews either, but many do correctly point out that Loewen's approach would do a service to the teaching of US history because it would show how endlessly interesting and controversial that same history is. More importantly, such an approach would explain to students the underlying causes of so many of the negative aspects of American society that they undoubtedly see around themselves everyday. Such an understanding can possibly foster efforts to improve this situation, hardly an unpatriotic prospect. As an aside, I have to note that I found reading this book and the reaction to it quite fascinating, because it runs parallel to a debate that's been going on among university history professors, school teachers and public education officials in many former communist countries of Europe for the last decade. Namely, the big question is should history textbooks and the teaching of history be aimed at presenting a critical analysis of the past or instilling some sort of "patriotic values" - which it did in a different way under the former communist regimes, i.e. with an ideologically-driven Marxist approach. It's interesting, and a little sad I suppose, that such a debate is not restricted to "developing" or "transition" countries.
Rating: 
Summary: bland negativism
Review: While I agree with the basic premise that high school history texts are too general and bland to be very interesting, I do not believe that they should be replaced with Loewen's version. Some of the other reviewers on this page have praised Loewen's use of facts. It's true. This book does swim with facts, some very unpleasant, but Loewen chooses which facts to include and which to leave out. And ultimately it's not his facts that he's so keen on inserting into the curriculum, it's his interpretations, which he doesn't always do a good job of supporting. The most outrageous sentence I recall from the book was when Loewen asserted in a single sentence that Davy Crockett et. al. died at the Alamo for no other reason than to defend the institution of slavery. This is the kind of provocative statement that would take a whole book to support, but Loewen lets it stand as undisputed fact. ... It's pretty clear that Loewen has a political agenda which is served by having Americans believe only the worst motives animated their ancestors. If you have to read this book, don't let it be the only one you read on American history.
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Summary: Makes history more interesting for me
Review: I think most people in our culture get some sort of high from iconoclasm and indignation. This book certainly provides that, starting with its confrontational title and continuing through its text. I really enjoyed this book and learned fascinating bits and pieces of history as I went along. The part about Columbus, of course, was one of the more disturbing, absurd, and compelling parts. Criticisms of this book as "politically correct" seem off the mark to me. It should never be considered merely politically correct to try to examine the viewpoints and histories of people other than the dominant majority (assuming that's what people mean about the book) -- it should be normal sensitivity. However, some more interesting criticisms I've seen point out that this book makes some claims about the teaching of history that may not be correct, and has its own political biases. I think these are at least partly true, but the book seems valuable to me nonetheless, because it points out so many things that I wouldn't otherwise know, notice, or see the significance of.
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Summary: Not Bad
Review: Loewen shows some liberal bias in his writing however this book is defintely not liberal revisionism. While I did not learn much from this work a few close friends have adjusted their viewpoints after a reading or two. Those who cite that every nation on earth has been guilty of atrocities at one time or another have a very weak argument because we are supposed to be above that. Placing the blame for atrocities in which the US government took part on anyone besides the involved agencies and politicians of the government is akin to saying that it is ok to be an accomplice to a crime if you are not aware a crime is taking place. Which is fine - sometimes that happens and I believe that ignorance is a valid excuse. However I would hope that everyone would like their government to be held more accountable for it's actions than it's citizens. Loewen does a fantastic job of dispelling deification of individuals. He isn't saying that all of our forefathers were evil men and women. Instead he is pointing out that it is time to stop teaching crap and time to start looking at historical figures as fallable individuals. I think that Helen Keller's political beliefs in her later life ARE important because the political beliefs of a person tend to line up with their experiences. I DO NOT agree with Helen Keller's political beliefs at all but I am smart enough to realize why she held them so dearly. The only people I do not recommend this book to are those with closed minds. If you are on the far left or right and you have a closed mind you will gain nothing by reading this book. To those that have been paying attention this book should come as no surprise. What this book really says is that government schooling (read the public school system) is bad (although Loewen may not realize that...I don't know the author's beliefs). At the very least cover it all high school historical factoid textbooks should be abandoned in favor of real history texts (Which this book is not...this book is a critique of high school history books). If you must know I am a Libertarian.
Rating: 
Summary: A Dryer, Dustier Book than Any History Text
Review: This book's cover suggests an excursion through US History to show what realy happened and what gets commonly taught in schools. Instead, it is a humorless, plodding, neverending series of the author's views of what is "important" in history as compared with the versions found in various textbooks he reviewed. And again. And again. And again. This book alone could turn anyone off the subject of US history. If you want a good book, try "Don't Know Much About History" (I think that's the name) which covers a similar subject with wit and charm.
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