Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong by James W. Loewen

Nov 07, 2007 Jason rated it 5 of 5 stars

Lies Across America: What our Historic Sites Get Wrong is an excellent book by James Loewen. He starts first with the western half of the United States since most history textbooks start with the eastern side. All of the information about historical markers is broken up into small sections for easy reading. Loewen proceeds to give state-by-state accounts of historical markers and their errors or in some cases their silliness. Many of the markers honor people as heroes who were in fact overt raci...more Lies Across America: What our Historic Sites Get Wrong is an excellent book by James Loewen. He starts first with the western half of the United States since most history textbooks start with the eastern side. All of the information about historical markers is broken up into small sections for easy reading. Loewen proceeds to give state-by-state accounts of historical markers and their errors or in some cases their silliness. Many of the markers honor people as heroes who were in fact overt racists. Other markers are notorious for telling one side of the story. Most of the markers in the south dealing with the Confederacy are found to slant towards confederate sentiments or just to omit what really happened at historic confederate sites. We also find out that many markers dealing with Native Americans would refer to them as savages or other racist terms. In many instances I was appalled by the honoring of people like Jeffrey Amherst in Massachusetts who intentionally initiated the spread of smallpox among Native Americans to exterminate them from the landscape. Loewen also points out our country has never been able to come to terms with gay or lesbian leaders and honor them. You can take a tour of Willa Cather's original home in Nebraska but never once hear anything mentioned about her being a lesbian. Another instance of outright silliness is when Plantation homes talk endlessly about silverware while you tour them but fail to mention anything to do with who built the homes, did the work there, and were held in bondage to the owners. These are just some of the things that you'll find contained in this book.

This book is very thought provoking and helps correct historical inaccuracy in the past. Historical inaccuracy prevents Americans from coming to terms with things that are important today such as: racism, homophobia, class inequality, and the glossing over of important events that could help us learn from them so as to prevent them from happening in the future. After all, George Santayna once admonished, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Do yourself a favor and read this book and let it help you start dialogue with others about our important and rich history. (less)

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Aug 19, 2007 Gwen rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book sort of bored me. I didn't like it as much as his other book, Lies My Teacher Told Me. I think I'd like it more as a travel guide to read before I visit any of these places. I enjoyed reading the sections on states I've lived in or know a lot about (and finding out my home state, Oklahoma, has, in his opinion, the single worst museum presentation in the U.S.). I'm sure when I travel to other states I'll want to read the sections relating to them. It's just a little repetitive to read s...more

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Sep 12, 2007 Mark rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: all Americans

Shelves: non-fiction

Awesome book. If you've ever wondered what America really looks like to other countries, this is the book for you. Loewen chose over 100 historic sites/museums/markers to dispel the myths of. Some are more surprising than others, but all of them are interesting. So much that I didn't know about our country. Not everything in the past is as rosy as our government would have us believe. And if we would only learn about these blemishes on our past, then we could learn from them and not repeat them....more

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Nov 21, 2008 Charley rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: no one

This book actually deserves no stars or a minus star. James W. Loewen obviously has an extreme amount of guilt from being a "White, European-American Male" as his entire book speaks of nothing other than mistreatment and degradation of blacks, native Americans and women to the aggrandizing of WASP American males. The one monument he finds accurate and correct is actually wrong in its interpreting of the facts. The author was a professor at U of VT. He and his ilk are what is wrong with our colle...more

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Jan 01, 2012 Frederick Bingham rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is about public monuments and the stories they tell. Many public monuments, historic sights, roadside plaques, etc. tell an inaccurate or biased story. The author has gone through a number of these and described what the monument got wrong.For example, in Scottsboro Alabama, the most important event ever to have happened there was the trial of the Scottsboro Boys in 1931-39. The town has several historic plaques in its central square, but nothing about that case.This is very much a pro...more

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May 15, 2013 Nathaniel rated it 2 of 5 stars

Pretty much the same as Loewen's more famous Lies My Teacher Told Me , only focused on public history instead of classroom history. And just like the first Lies , this is a book with a great premise that suffers from flawed execution and a lack of editorial discipline on the part of its author.

When Loewen is writing about history itself, his research is pretty good (albeit slanted), and some of the local stories he uncovers are fascinating in a way that encourages further discovery. And he ma...more Pretty much the same as Loewen's more famous Lies My Teacher Told Me , only focused on public history instead of classroom history. And just like the first Lies , this is a book with a great premise that suffers from flawed execution and a lack of editorial discipline on the part of its author.

When Loewen is writing about history itself, his research is pretty good (albeit slanted), and some of the local stories he uncovers are fascinating in a way that encourages further discovery. And he makes a good case for why public history as a national exercise is flawed. But just like Lies My Teacher Told Me , Loewen undermines his own argument with two major problems: mistaking his own opinions for fact, and being unable to acknowledge this lack of neutrality in his own analysis. Consequently, he writes in a very personal, very opinionated style that is totally inappropriate for a book that purports to be factual. One might even argue that this presentation is hypocritical, because while Loewen decries the historical biases and agendas of others he is just as adamantly advocating his own - he doesn't want true history to be told so much as he wants to fit in with his generation of historical revisionists in academia, who simply want to change the focus from "old rich white guys" to "race and gender issues" in a way that seems mostly grounded in flipping the bird to their (by now long-dead) parents, instead of aiming for a truly honest narrative that acknowledges everyone at once, including other traditionally ignored groups such as lower-class whites. At it worst, Loewen goes so far as to suggest rewordings of historical markers that are neither appropriate nor professional and would simply create a new problem if they were ever suggested by a serious person in that community.

As someone who actually has training in archives and has known a lot of people who worked in public history, there's also something about the premise of this book that bothers me. Though Loewen acknowledges in one of his introductory essays that public history as a discipline is grounded in the history of a community, he then spends the entire book implying that every community that ignores its own history is always wrong, and that he is a better authority on the subject than the people who actually live in those places, or the scores of actual public history professionals who maintain these sites. This holier-than-thou attitude comes through in really inappropriate ways sometimes, especially when he passive-aggressively ends a chapter with an ignorant quote by a student at Franklin Pierce College by letting the quote hang in the air like a bad fart. This same chapter also frequently refers to the author's own opinion that Pierce was the worst president in American history in order to make what should be a purely factual point, when even at that time it was generally acknowledged that Buchanan was worse. (One wonders what the author subsequently thought of George W. Bush and would say about Pierce in comparison now). There's also the issue of Loewen's framing, which implies a black and white generalization that all historic markers are either "good" or "bad". In reality, most historic markers are pretty neutral and commemorate things like locally famous houses that Loewen wouldn't necessarily know about as a tourist or find useful to his agenda even if he did. For this reason, the implication that ALL historic markers are either (rarely) shining gems of perfection or (mostly) filled with bad history, bad history I say (!) is simply disingenuous. And finally, of course, this being an old book, it's often quite dated now.

With that said, Loewen deserves an extra star for having some good intentions, and for bring a lot of really neat and obscure local history to light in the course of writing this book. I just think this book could've been a lot more intellectually honest if he'd truly sought balance instead of pushing his own agenda and blatantly editorializing on every page. (less)

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Aug 05, 2012 Timothy Riley rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 20th-century-us-history

Brilliant!
This book could be used in conjunction with a US high school history textbook. It covers almost everything that isn't covered normally. I loved how he focused on the South and their deification of the Confederacy. I am also sick of this glorification. It left me thinking the North probably would have been better off if they just let the Southern states secede and go their own way. To this day the Daughters of the Confederacy dominate the telling of history in the South. By putting up i...more Brilliant!
This book could be used in conjunction with a US high school history textbook. It covers almost everything that isn't covered normally. I loved how he focused on the South and their deification of the Confederacy. I am also sick of this glorification. It left me thinking the North probably would have been better off if they just let the Southern states secede and go their own way. To this day the Daughters of the Confederacy dominate the telling of history in the South. By putting up inaccurate or just straight up racist markers and monuments they have cornered the market on the civil war. I can't get over how South Carolina was allowed to memorialize their dead at Gettysburg in the way that they did, but still to this day most southern battlefields do not have a northern memorial for the dead-AND THEY WERE ON THE MORALLY RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY!!! The South sought to continue the system of slavery-point blank. In addition, Loewen does a great job of dealing with memorials to reconstruction and how the South treats that time period when Blacks actually had some semblance of a voice. Of course through sheer murder and mayhem (Nathan Beddford Forrest) the whites were able to squish any freedoms they were given.

The South has put up monuments to politicians, generals who committed mass murder and who have been quoted as saying such thing as, "Do not let a single nigger vote. If you let a few register and vote this year, next year there will be twice as many, and the first thing you know the whole thing will be out of hand." 1946 Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo. And his statue is in the State Capitol.

Another example is the man in charge of the Andersonville POW camp in the south where union soldiers starved to death is memorialized there by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. This group moved their annual chapter picnic from the Richmond Heroes park once a plaque for Arthur Ashe got put up. This is 2012!!

The other good points that were made were about not recognizing Spanish settlements in the West and not handling wars with Native Americans well. Unfortunately the chapter about PA was pretty boring-nothing too out of hand besides a gay president Buchanan.

If you want to be able to interpret american history, read this book. PS. someone needs to take a sledge hammer on a southern road trip and take care of some of these.
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May 30, 2011 Jenny.p rated it 4 of 5 stars

A both entertaining and well thought through "expose" of American monuments and memorials across the country that perpetuate historical inaccuracies that vary from small blunders to wild untruths ("why exactly is there a monument honoring the women of the Confederacy in Montana when there wasn't a Confederacy in Montana"). Loewen divides the book by region and each chapter is short and pithy--it reads like a travel book. His ultimate point about the myths that these markers create have an impact...more

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Nov 07, 2012 Toto Maya rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

I first read this book years ago when I picked it up on a whim inside of a book store. I thought I might learn a few interesting facts as well as some history from it. What I got from the book, however, was a book that challenged what I thought I knew about the world, what I believed about the United States, and ultimately sharpened my critical thinking skills beyond what I thought they could be.

We are generally taught to believe what is in front of us, that if a monument says what happened ther...more

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Jan 20, 2013 John Betts rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history

Just finished reading this interesting book which looks at about a hundred historic markers and sites across the country and examines the accuracy of what they tell the public. The author makes a compelling case that many of these sites do a poor job but his obvious bias detracts from this work and comes across as a partisan ideologue in some of it. While my own personal experience at some of these sites leads me to believe that they do indeed do a mediocre to poor job as custodians of our histo...more

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Jan 26, 2013 Chris Demer rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: expose, history

This was an excellent book and I found out about a lot of history I was vague about, or had never heard of.
Among the interesting facts I recall:
Many American places, rivers, mountains, lakes, etc were "discovered" by Europeans and named by them, even though Natives Americans had discovered them centuries or millenia ago and already had names for them.
The racism and atrocities perpetrated against the Native Americans and African Americans was far more evil and pervasive than anything you will fin...more This was an excellent book and I found out about a lot of history I was vague about, or had never heard of.
Among the interesting facts I recall:
Many American places, rivers, mountains, lakes, etc were "discovered" by Europeans and named by them, even though Natives Americans had discovered them centuries or millenia ago and already had names for them.
The racism and atrocities perpetrated against the Native Americans and African Americans was far more evil and pervasive than anything you will find in history books. Many famous white men even verbalized the desire to "wipe out the whole lot" and made efforts to do so. For that they were praised. (e.g Amherst- who tried to wipe out pesky Indians with smallpox infected blankets.) A town and college were named after him.
The author points out that very few markers or monuments portray women or people of color, and those that do generally put those "minorities" in positions of subservience and/or minimize their contributions.
Although it is assumed that the victors write the history, the story of the Civil War is mostly written by the losers! Markers all over the south and even at Gettysburg would indicate that the south was fighting for a valiant cause (variously states' rights, "our way of life", etc) with nary a mention of slavery. The monuments and markers give praise to the likes of southern generals (Forrest) who ordered the killing of all their Union prisoners of war. Much of this display of the aggrandized Confederacy was paid for and put up by the Daughters of the Confederacy- some quite recently.
While many lovely antebellum mansions can be toured, most of the commentary revolves around the architecture, china and silverware. Never is there a mention of the slave labor that allowed for the building of these mansions or the acquisition of all the fine china and silver. When slavery is mentioned, and it is generally because someone asks about it, the reply always seems to indicate that the slaves were treated well and were quite happy. Of course slave rebellions, revolts and runaways gave lie to the "happy darky" stories.
Members and leaders of the Ku Klux Klan are provided with positive testimonials, markers, and even carvings in the mountains of Georgia!

I could go on and on- but you should read the book yourself. And we should try to gain a better understanding of the history that really was, not the history that a privileged few would like us to believe. (less)

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Aug 31, 2009 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

I’ll bet the United Daughters of the Confederacy didn’t love this book. I will say that I didn’t love it either – though certainly not for the same reasons. As something of a follow up to his investigation into the dismal state of public school US History textbooks, Loewen sets his sights on the questionable state of monuments, markers, and historical plaques scattered throughout the US. It’s a valiant effort, and certainly makes for a clear thesis about how misinterpretations and misinformation...more I’ll bet the United Daughters of the Confederacy didn’t love this book. I will say that I didn’t love it either – though certainly not for the same reasons. As something of a follow up to his investigation into the dismal state of public school US History textbooks, Loewen sets his sights on the questionable state of monuments, markers, and historical plaques scattered throughout the US. It’s a valiant effort, and certainly makes for a clear thesis about how misinterpretations and misinformation dominates the landscape’s “official” history.

Two primary – or oft repeated – false narratives emerge. First (and influencing Loewen’s West-to-East chapter counter-structure) there is the strong, Eurocentric (or WASP-centric) thinking dominates our selective story about how whites “settled” the US starting in Massachusetts and transitioned throughout the “wild” west over the ensuing centuries. This obviously ignores the millions of Native Americans already firmly settled – most were not nomadic – everywhere and even the Spaniards who had already plundered (and thus “settled”) the whole southern strip of what is now the US. Ironically the South doesn’t emerge in the official tale until after Reconstruction, when suddenly the Confederate States of America was no longer about maintaining slavery but now a valiant effort to maintain states rights and “Southern Culture” and – if the markers/memorials portray slavery at all – it wasn’t so bad as evidenced by “The Good Darky” statues and other stories about how satisfied southern blacks obviously were under such a sensible structure.

Loewen unearths other erroneous examples (a few examples from the Spanish…um…that is…The Philippines-American War) and even explores some museums and exhibits to highlight how the omission of part of a story, or some cautious wording can turn a murderous tragedy into a celebration of the murderer. I found it all very interesting but, as there were so many individual examples, it came off a bit choppy compared to his Lies My Teacher Told Me. This read more like a guide book – which, I suppose, was an intentional reader option – but it somehow felt simultaneously less diverse yet also less focused than his previous book. The two narratives dominate and other examples of incredulity show up once or get much less attention.

Whatever, I’ve never even visited a number of these states – and the individual examples are well selected – so Four Stars! But if you have time for only one Loewen book, I recommend his previous effort.
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Dec 26, 2012 Socraticgadfly rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: history

Did you know that, in language backdated from the McCarthy era, Helen Keller was a "Com-symp," a Communist sympathizer? Well, no, because that wouldn't be so edifying.

But it's the truth; she even sent Lenin a letter congratulating him on the Russian Revolution. And, this Alabama native was also a strong supporter of the NAACP.

Of course, you won't find either one of those facts mentioned at her white-run, white-bread historical site home.

Nor will you find the possibility of President James Buchan...more

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Jul 09, 2011 Tom Darrow rated it 5 of 5 stars

Great book. This is an everyman's book on histiography. He talks about revisionist history and how different areas in the US change history for their own reasons. For example, he talks about how there is a monument to "our confederate dead" in Montana, even though 1) Montana wasn't a state during the Civil War and 2) even if it was, it would probably have been a Union state. So why did the people in Montana make that monument? Turns out, that monument, like many throughout the country, was place...more

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May 06, 2010 Ryan Mishap rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history

Surveys monuments, markers, and historical spots across the United States and tells us how the signs either get it wrong, outright lie, or leave facts out. This is interesting for all those who have traveled and visited such markers and memorials, but this book is also important.

He spends a lot of time debunking the neo-confederate revision of the Civil War and Reconstruction. How memorials and plaques put up after the fact often say more about who put them up and their politics and aims than ab...more

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Mar 26, 2011 Cindy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, non-fiction

Even better than his first book. Really blasts away at the institutional racism that exists all over our country. Brilliant writing. Very engaging. I highly recommend both books!

pg. 37- "The recently departed whose time on earth overlapped with people still here are the sasha, living-dead. They are not wholly dead for they live on in the memories of the living, who can call them to mind, create their likeness in art, and bring them to life in anecdote. When the last person to know an ancestor di...more

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Feb 03, 2012 Harry Klinkhamer rated it 1 of 5 stars

I'm sorry, but Loewen's scathing attacks on history organizations for failing to preserve and interpret a more open and progressive past fails to take into account the restrictions placed on many organiations to do that. I worked for one of the organizations that was criticized in this book and take offense at his remarks that we failed to adequately preserve women's history in our state markers program. Markers are placed when a private source funds them, so if Mr. Loewen is that upset, he shou...more

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May 07, 2009 christina rated it 4 of 5 stars

As a history fan, this book took off the top of my head. Lowen set out to examine the truth or untruth of how historic sites are presented and ends up showing us the fault line of our private + public conscience. There are plenty of calls to action throughout but ultimately it's about taking back the landscape from the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the KKK, and similar. Favorite line: "History--telling what happened in the past--is an ongoing process, not a product, and on the local level...more

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Oct 14, 2012 Mike rated it 2 of 5 stars

Lies of omission would be a better title.

I found this book to be a little disappointing. Perhaps it's my fault for misinterpreting the subject matter. I had assumed it dealt with information that was undeniably wrong or untrue. Presenting things inaccurate in fact rather than too concise or limited in scope.

The majority of the entries are not so much out and out "lies" as they are lies of omission or representative of events the author feels are insufficiently recognized. An example of the latt...more Lies of omission would be a better title.

I found this book to be a little disappointing. Perhaps it's my fault for misinterpreting the subject matter. I had assumed it dealt with information that was undeniably wrong or untrue. Presenting things inaccurate in fact rather than too concise or limited in scope.

The majority of the entries are not so much out and out "lies" as they are lies of omission or representative of events the author feels are insufficiently recognized. An example of the latter would be the "lie" of a marker that mentions a place where a woman was lynched for the crime of killing a man. Although the woman is misrepresented as having been white when she was actually Spanish the author feels the bigger "lie" is that it bothers to mention the woman at all while many other lynchings (throughout the history of the country not as part of the same incident) involving men as victims are not commemorated at all.

There are representations of factual inaccuracies but most entries are "lies" only to the extent that they don't tell a complete version of the story. Not so much lies as edited (sanitized) versions. Maybe I'm being too optimistic or charitable to the average American's intelligence but I believe many of them are fairly obvious in their limitations and don't necessarily require someone pointing out that they tell only one side of a story.

Initially I found the writing to be dry and somewhat hard to connect with but as I got deeper into the book that became less of an issue. Either I became more accustomed to the author's style, or more engrossed in the subject matter. Or, quite possibly, I went in with some bias and resentment from the fact that I felt (and still do) the book had been misrepresented thus my first impression was simply wrong.

As far as the overly politically correct attitude, apologist or anti-white overtones that others have referenced... one could definitely interpret it that way. It has more to do with the underlying theme of presenting a larger picture that represents the entire story in my opinion. Although there are points where it certainly felt to me as though the author was beating me over the head with his personal ideology (even though I agree with most of it). I also found the semantics over what constitutes "discovery", "wilderness" and "civilization" to be condescending, and overly simplistic.

Some of the stronger -- and more interesting in my opinion -- passages in the book are actually related to the origins of the monuments themselves and the bias of those sponsoring them. Particularly the ones that relate to the various Confederate memorials throughout the country. Once I got around the 'beating a dead horse' aspect of repeating much of the same comments on racial injustices, prejudices, etc. that had been previously stated elsewhere in the book I found them to be highly informative as to the general attitudes of the people and times in which they were created.

All in all it's not a bad book. Is it heavy handed? Oh, yes, very much so in some parts. Is it informative? Absolutely.
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Jul 10, 2012 Ken Moten rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction-stuff, history-stuff

Professor Loewen, after doing his critically acclaimed expose on American history books Lies My Teacher Told Me : Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, now takes his show on the road...literally.

This book follows the professor as he goes to all 50 states to show either what information each state fabricates, lies about, or in some cases cover up about historic landmarks across the country. in some cases you have erronous confederate monuments where they are not suppose to be. and...more

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Mar 15, 2012 Linda rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fic

Published in 1999, Lies Across America contains 100 brief essays about the mistakes and misrepresentations that abound across the US on roadside history markers. First there are the blatant deceptions: Consider, for example, that The Native American tribe known today as the Delawares had that name foisted upon them by Europeans; its members referred to themselves as Lenape, which means "we are the people". In Kentucky, the log cabin said to be the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln was built 30 years...more Published in 1999, Lies Across America contains 100 brief essays about the mistakes and misrepresentations that abound across the US on roadside history markers. First there are the blatant deceptions: Consider, for example, that The Native American tribe known today as the Delawares had that name foisted upon them by Europeans; its members referred to themselves as Lenape, which means "we are the people". In Kentucky, the log cabin said to be the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln was built 30 years after his death. Then there are the glaring omissions: Among the hundreds of memorials located on Gettysburg Battlefield, not one of them, Union or Confederate, mentions slavery. More generically, there are incredibly few statues of prominent American women who actually lived, though there are some symbolic ones, most notably, Lady Liberty. There are also some amusing entries, such as the way in which the story of young George Washington and the cherry tree became accepted as gospel, or the spat about the whether Daniel Boone is buried in Missouri or Kentucky, or another about who was the first to administer general anaesthesia.

Many if not most of our historical sites were established following the Colonial Revival movement, during the first half of the twentieth century. Since history is generally written by the powerful and victorious, it is not surprising that they would choose to commission monuments that tell only the positive sides of their stories. Nor is it surprising that the disenfranchised - for a long time, that means anyone who was not white, European, and male - are largely ignored. Lies Across America provides an important service in pointing out the need to revise the way our history is presented to us; if this is going to continue to happen by way of plaques and monuments, it's crucial that what they tell us is accurate and fair. Lies is interesting and fun to read, but if it does not spur its readers to explore history on a deeper level, it encourages only destruction and ridicule, rather than reform and education.(less)

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Nov 24, 2012 Nanette Bulebosh rated it 4 of 5 stars

James Loewen is best known for his breakthrough "Lies My Teacher Told Me," a scathing attack on traditional history textbooks for their superficial, nationalist, pro-imperialist views. It's fine to teach students about all the great accomplishments of the courageous people who built this country, he argues. But we're doing them, and our ancestors, a disservice if we fail to also identify how and where we went wrong.

This newer book focuses on the many historic sites (such as the plaques that tell...more

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Jul 24, 2009 William rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book can't possibly be for everbody...I, in fact, started out hating it... too repetitious, too dense, way too many footnotes and as an African American, too little of any new revelations...American history is racist so why should its markers and monumnets be any different? But as I read I became fascinated with the history and minutae thats slowly revealed. Much of it local and pasted by unnoticed by me for years (A statue honoring a founder of the KKK in Judiciary Square in majority Black...more

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Jan 02, 2009 Kelly rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2009, non-fiction

I mostly skimmed this one. Like all historians, Loewen has the true story and this book is that story. While certainly I know what he's done is grounded in good research and takes into account how everything America celebrates is Eurocentric, he's frustrating. I love reading the "true" stories behind issues, particularly with public history, but I really hate when it becomes a book that condemns European culture or the attempts to make history public (regardless of how wrong, isn't it at least a...more

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Jul 06, 2008 Poorfish rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

Another Loewen book that was taken from me and a book I wished I still had. This book of "truths" is great for road trips. It's neat to read to how many national parks and monuments are worded and displayed to promote individual agendas that slowly influence our historical memory. Even though I was already aware that this type of thing happens all the time, the book still served as a reminder to read those memorial markers a little bit closer (for example the first time I stepped foot on the UGA...more

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Feb 22, 2011 Owen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Good, not as good as Lies my Teacher Told Me, but still a good read. This one was a solid 3 star book for me, worth the read but not required reading. I did learn that Mt McKinley being named as kind of an inside joke, when McKinley was still years away from the Presidency, when it was called Denali by the natives. His premise of starting in the west of the continent seems to be a natural progression of 60s leftists. He is not much of a fan of the Confederacy. Just a heads-up.

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May 25, 2010 Zohar - ManOfLaBook.com rated it 5 of 5 stars

I bought this book after I read "Lies My Teacher Told Me", and again Mr. Loewen did not fail. This book discusses what some of our historic sites got wrong, the politics behind the markers, what they impley, and the damage they are doing to our society. It is very interesting to see how our culture changed, it's ideas and ideals, and if you look carefuly at the markers you could also tell and what time they were put up, buy whom, and what where the social state of mind than.

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Jun 11, 2012 Karen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Great history text with a plea that, like our history books, the memorials, museums, etc. plastered all over the US be corrected either directly, removed, moved to it’s more correct placement, more accurate wording, racial prejudices removed or explained via a timeline explaining the ‘why’ of selected changes that have occurred producing the errors.

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May 27, 2010 Manee rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Loewen is one of my favourite history writers, and I love "Lies My Teacher Told Me" to death. This book is basically a romp through the states and historical markers and monuments, pointing out inaccuracies and downright fiction. It's an interesting view of the US and its inability to remember what happened not even a hundred years ago, much less longer.

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Aug 05, 2012 Dan rated it 2 of 5 stars

Once again, only concerned with race. From time to time he omits parts of the story himself, to boost his own point (for example mentioning that labor leader Joe Hill was executed, but never mentioning why, implying it was for his views. Nope - murder). I wanted history, not whining preaching. Disappointing.

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52447.Lies_Across_America?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1170388232l/52447.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52447.Lies_Across_America?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong by James W. Loewen[/url]

Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong

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