Perspective

James W. Loewen, a Harvard University Ph.D. in sociology, has taught at the predominantly black Tougaloo College in Mississippi before spending twenty years at the University of Vermont, and currently lives in Washington, DC, continuing his research into how people assimilate the past. Early in the book Loewen reveals how, in Vermont, he enjoys asking first-year students in his race-relations classes about what they retain from high school American history courses. For the most part, they are skeptical about the cultural heroes foist upon them and have lost interest in the entire discipline of history, but hunger for useable role models.

Lies My Teacher Told Me (1995) is the fruit of two years studying and comparing the contents of American history textbooks at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. The book's subtitle summarizes the results: "Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong". Loewen admits he "learned" history from...