Reviewed by Kathy London

This book by James W. Loewen covers a survey of twelve major high school history textbooks that the author found to be full of irrelevant and erroneous details, yet omitting pivotal facts. While history contains fantastic and important stories which “have the power to spellbind audiences, even audiences of difficult seventh-graders”, textbooks come up lacking. They are concoctions of “lies, half-truths, truths, and omissions” that avoid many important ideas, and they are generally boring. No wonder students lose interest. Since I was bored by history in high school, Loewen’s book rings true for me.

Loewen will provide any group with lively conversation: people of Columbus’ age did not believe the world was flat; Europeans were able to conquer the New World because European diseases decimated Native Americans, Helen Keller was an active social radical, and Abraham Lincoln did say the Civil War was fought to end slavery. Be outraged when Loewen labels your favorite piece of history as bland optimism, blind nationalism, or plain misinformation, and delve your own research.

I recommend the book and Loewen’s home page. So I was delighted recently to find Loewen’s home page. Here are some provocative quotes from that site:

“Most Americans hold basic misconceptions about the Confederacy, the Civil War, and the acts of neo-Confederates afterward. 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.”

“Did you know that the automobile was invented in rural Wisconsin? That a Texas preacher beat the Wright brothers by a year, in a plane inspired by the word of God? There were four different people in three states that ‘first’ used anesthesia in an operation? That Abraham Lincoln was born in a cabin in Kentucky built 30 years after his death? Those things never happened, of course, but the landscape commemorates them anyway.”

Loewen has done much work on racism. For example, he describes “Sundown towns.” “Growing up, I knew … towns [that were] all white, but it never occurred to me that …these towns prohibited black residents… To my astonishment, I have found 500 sundown towns in Illinois alone—and now estimate that, by 1970, their peak, 10,000 existed in the United States.”

If you may think white supremacy is ancient history or fringe groups, here is a personal story of the reviewer: When I was a member of the Friends of the Longmont Library in the early 2000s, I learned that the library had an extensive file of newspaper articles on the Klu Klux Klan in Longmont, Colorado. While I was a member, someone stole all the file contents. The librarians hypothesized the theft was intended to hide prominent Longmont family names that appeared in the files. Loewen’s documentation of all-white towns as recently as 1970 reinforces my realization that discrimination against African Americans is barely far enough in the past to be called “history”.

Read Loewen’s books, Do your own research into items that surprise you. Remember: “Who controls the past, controls the future.”

The “web master” must add a warning to this provocative review. I am not familiar with some of the “misconceptions” from history books, but I am somewhat familiar with the issue of Lincoln and slavery. Mr. Lincoln is famously quoted as saying his primary objective was to preserve the union. On August 22, 1862 he said, “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.” Consistent with that quote, President Lincloln issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared slaves in Confederate-controlled areas to be free. The Proclamation said nothing about slaves in areas controlled by the North.

So, read, consider, and look to confirm what you have read. I think Mr. Loewen would endorse that approach.