Math He He থেকে Phang Khon District, Sakon Nakhon, Thailand থেকে Phang Khon District, Sakon Nakhon, Thailand

This is a great book. The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars was because I found it a little too long and a couple of things in the later chapters seemed repetitive. BUT I THINK EVERYONE SHOULD READ THIS BOOK. I was going to say everyone who was interested in history or American history or how history is taught, but really, we should all be interested in American history, because it is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. Loewen does a great job right off the bat talking about heroification, using contemporaries Woodrow Wilson and Helen Keller as examples of how by telling only the tame palatable stories about people's lives we lose the chance to learn from them as real human beings. And in the same way, if we don't tell about our collective mistakes, we can't learn from them, AND it makes American history boring and everyone's least favorite subject. His task is twofold: he attempts to both explain the shortcomings of how American history is taught and also to correct some of the errors this incorrect presentation has propagated. He limits his critique of teaching methods to high school American history and the textbooks used in public schools. Even while limiting his scope in this way, he manages to effectively convey the state of textbook publishing: that fewer companies are dominating the market, and most of the books are simply updates of old texts; and that these updates often add much volume and little substance, and also, by leaving in old material, makes the text frequently contradict itself. His structure for the content of the book is impressive and makes his case convincing. He attempts to correct the most significant misconceptions propagated by American history classes in US classrooms, which are primarily related to three big topics: 1) the conquest of the land that would become the United States and the people who lived there, 2) slavery and black-white race relations, and 3) the portrayal of US involvement in the Vietnam War and other military interventions all over the world. Along the way he discusses many topics related to these three broad areas, and of course he does not cover everything, but he correctly addresses these as the three biggest historical topics on which we have been led astray.