Lies My Teacher Told Me

Very interesting description of the pieces of history left out of (or completely distorted by) high-school U.S. history books. The analysis throughout the book about what this incomplete picture does to the way students think has really made me think a lot about what I accept as true and what I need to understand better.

A classic, well written critique of the way we teach history in American public schools and its social and political consequences. For me the biggest revelation of this book was realizing that most Americans do not study history past high school. (I know, that's an incredibly naive, elitist thing to be surprised by, but I hadn't really thought it through before.) I've always known that grade school history textbooks were problematic, but of course students are taught more than just that, right? Unfortunately, for many students, the answer is no. And that is scary.

While the book does expose lies, many of them aren't nation wide phenomena (I remember elementary school textbooks, some published decades ago, that did present truthfully the facts).

Also, the author seems to have an agenda of nonconformist, disillusioned anti-capitalism (I almost included a spoilers alert...)

Fortunately, the author only makes his agenda clear in the last 30% of the book, and the first 70% are an unadulterated, fun and informative reading.

I wish I had this book when I was in high school, before I took any history classes. The book lays out many of the “lies” people in the US learn about our history in great detail in the first part of the book. So much detail, that I was wondering how he could fit everything in at the rate he was covering issues, but I guess that would be an impossible task, he just covers the most glaring problems. Then, at the end he walks through what he thinks could change in our educational system. I was less into the latter portion most of the way through, but by the end I was feeling hopeful that at least some of the changes would come to pass. Now, I'll pass this book on to my friends and family, I think anyone can learn something from this book!