My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Goodreads rating: 4.26 with 47 ratings (as of 5/23/2019)

Essential reading in our age of fake news and slippery, sloppy history, Lies My Teacher Told Me for Young Readers cuts through the mindless optimism and outright lies featured in most textbooks. Beginning with pre-Columbian history and then covering characters and events as diverse as Helen Keller, the first Thanksgiving, 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)..…more

200 Word Review

I was provided with a complimentary copy of this book so I could give an honest review.

Everyone has most likely heard the quote, “History is written by the victors.” Although the quote is often attributed to Winston Churchill, it is not known who originally said it. However, the author does not matter, only the truth of the quote.

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Young Readers’ Edition Everything American History Textbooks Get Wrong by James W. Loewen is part of his campaign to correct mistakes that have been taught in schools for years. His most famous work, Lies My Teacher Told Me, was originally published in 1995.

This history book is geared toward “young readers”. I, as an adult, found the information interesting and some was outright surprising to me. However, I think young readers would find it wordy. This was not a book to sit and read cover to cover. I needed time to reflect, discuss, and to research sections for more information.

Adding it to an advanced or higher level history course to complement a traditional history textbook would be an asset to the student’s education. Allowing both books to be read at the same time would probably help encourage the reader’s curiosity to not just accept the textbooks offers as history as fact.

This review was published on Philomathinphila.com, Smashbomb, Goodreads, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble on 5/23/19 and on Facebook and Twitter on 6/11/19. When available, the review will be published on Scribd.com and, using Overdrive, will be rated in 9 libraries.

Genre: Nonfiction, History, Children, Young Adult
Print Length: 256 pages
ISBN: 9781620974698
Publisher: The New Press
Publication Date: April 23, 2019

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