Lies across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong [Paperback]

Anyone who dismisses this as a "doctoral dissertation" from someone in an "ivory tower" hasn't read any dissertations, trust me. These are funny, chatty, entertaining books. (This one in particular is a great browse, because it's broken cleanly into sections about individual monuments.) Loewen's voice is perfect for this tone and subject, not in any way affected or studied; he's a likeable author, and these are enjoyable books.

Loewen's overarching theme is that history would be a much more vital, constructive force in American life if Americans were actually exposed to its true breadth and depth. Loewen makes many impassioned appeals to primary sources, to the voices and sentiments of actual participants. He gets at those basic themes in a nicely straightforward, common-sensical way -- by comparing primary sources to the schlock we're given in their place. For my money, the humor and pathos, the melancholy irony, in that comparison is a breath of fresh air. Lies My Teacher Told Me used a comparison of several high school textbooks as its departure point. Here Loewen begins by examining historical markers, asking whether each does an adequate job of describing the history it's meant to include. He compares the words on stone monuments to the words in, say, confederate generals' mouths. Dusty academic argument this ain't. It's just plain fun. (I mean, what are we to make of monuments to confederate dead in Montana? Montana didn't have any soldiers on either side...)

To the criticism that Loewen hasn't been prescriptive enough, that he doesn't say what each monument SHOULD include, I would say -- Gee, um, he does. If you read the essays, Loewen goes into extensive discussions about what's missing in many museums and inscriptions. The Nimitz Museum (Museum of the Pacific War) should include, for example, specific quotes from Nimitz about the prospect of invading Japan -- and in any case it shouldn't depict Nimitz as taking a position diametrically opposite from his real one. Also, both this book and Lies My Teacher Told Me have been both general histories and wonderfully ironic lessons in how pressures conspire to prevent real history from reaching people. Dissecting the workings of those whitewashing forces is at least as worthwhile as rewriting the actual texts. Loewen does do both jobs, though, anyway.

But hey, don't believe me -- watch the people who want their ... history left alone squirm, and you'll know you should be in on the fun.

After I had read him perhaps two dozen of the ninety-five essays in this book, my friend had no significant criticisms: Loewen correctly identifies not only those areas where there is a difference of opinion among historians, but also where there is agreement among historians that differs with the popular imagination. Loewen also identifies the actual history behind each monument, both the history of the event commemorated and the history of the monument itself where appropriate. He distinguishes between markers which merely attempt to cloud the truth (essay 13, for example), those which blatantly contradict the truth (essay 62), and those which have no relationship to the truth but have instead been invented of whole cloth (essay 15). The book is an impressive piece of historical detective-work, even more so when one considers that the history involved covers nearly the whole of the United States.

In the end, my friend enjoyed my 'preview' of Loewen's book enough so that he went out and purchased the hardcover. I already had. The book really is that good.

Better to be read as a set of stories rather than gospel history. Loewen's left leaning comes through just as in his previous Lies, but sometimes I think that it's his way of taking the opposite position from conventional thinking.

This is not a perfect history book, but it made me think. In addition, I bought more copies to present as gifts to my history loving friends.