Lies My Teacher Told Me

About “Lies My Teacher Told Me”

Lies My Teacher Told Me is a 1995 book by sociologist James W. Loewen. It began as a survey of twelve leading American history textbooks and later won an American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship. The book has sold over half a million copies in its various editions. Loewen critiques existing textbooks and presents a more accurate and complex version of American history. He covers topics such as pre-Columbian history, Reconstruction, Helen Keller, the first Thanksgiving, and the Mai Lai massacre. The San Francisco Chronicle called the book "an extremely convincing plea for truth in education."