Lies Across America, James W. Loewen
Lies Across America, James W. Loewen
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Lies Across America
What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong / Twentieth Anniversary Edition

Author: James W. Loewen

Narrator: L.J. Ganser

Unabridged: 18 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 09/24/2019


Synopsis

A fully updated and revised edition of the book USA Today called “jim-dandy pop history,” by the bestselling, American Book Award–winning author

From the author of the national bestseller Lies My Teacher Told Me, a completely updated—and more timely than ever—version of the myth-busting history book that focuses on the inaccuracies, myths, and lies on monuments, statues, national landmarks, and historical sites all across America.

In Lies Across America, James W. Loewen continues his mission, begun in the award-winning Lies My Teacher Told Me, of overturning the myths and misinformation that too often pass for American history. This is a one-of-a-kind examination of historic sites all over the country where history is literally written on the landscape, including historical markers, monuments, historic houses, forts, and ships. New changes and updates include:
• a town in Louisiana that was the site of a major but now-forgotten enslaved persons’ uprising
• a totally revised tour of the memory and intentional forgetting of slavery and the Civil War in Richmond, Virginia
• the hideout of a gang in Delaware that made money by kidnapping free blacks and selling them into slavery

Entertaining and enlightening, Lies Across America also has a serious role to play in contemporary debates about white supremacy and Confederate memorials.

“The most definitive and expansive work on the Lost Cause and the movement to whitewash history.”—Mitch Landrieu, mayor of New Orleans

About James W. Loewen

James W. Loewen is the bestselling and award-winning author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, Lies Across America, Lies My Teacher Told Me About Christopher Columbus, Sundown Towns, and Lies My Teacher Told Me: Young Readers' Edition. He also wrote Teaching What Really Happened and The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White and edited The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader. He has won the American Book Award, the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship, the Spirit of America Award from the National Council for the Social Studies, and the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award. Loewen is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Vermont and lives in Washington, DC.


Reviews

Goodreads review by William

This book can't possibly be for everybody...I, in fact, started out hating it... too repetitious, too dense, way too many footnotes and as an African American, too little of any new revelations...American history is racist so why should its markers and monuments be any different? But as I read I bec......more

Goodreads review by Mike

Lies of omission would be a better title. I found this book to be a little disappointing. Perhaps it's my fault for misinterpreting the subject matter. I had assumed it dealt with information that was undeniably wrong or untrue. Presenting things inaccurate in fact rather than too concise or limited......more

Goodreads review by Jason

Lies Across America: What our Historic Sites Get Wrong is an excellent book by James Loewen. He starts first with the western half of the United States since most history textbooks start with the eastern side. All of the information about historical markers is broken up into small sections for easy......more

I'm a librarian with archival training who has known several people who worked in public history, including the head of the Indiana Historical Bureau (which produces every historic marker in that state) and actually understands public history as a professional field. And this book is proof that Jame......more