Lies My Teacher Told Me About Christopher Columbus: What Your History Books Got Wrong (46 page)
Read Lies My Teacher Told Me About Christopher Columbus: What Your History Books Got Wrong Online
Authors: James W. Loewen
Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Historiography, #Juvenile literature, #Columbus, #America - Discovery and exploration - Spanish - Juvenile literature., #Renaissance, #History & the past: general interest (Children's, #Christopher, #America - Discovery and exploration - Spanish., #North American, #Explorers., #YA), #America, #Explorers, #America - Discovery and exploration - Spanish, #History - General History, #United States, #History, #Study & Teaching, #History of the Americas, #United States - General, #Discovery and exploration, #Reference & Home Learning, #History: World, #Spanish, #World history, #Education
Thomas Jefferson surely had it right when he urged the teaching of political history so that Americans might learn “how to judge for themselves what will secure or endanger their freedom.” Citizens who are their own historians, willing to identify lies and distortions and able to use sources to determine what really went on in the past, become a formidable force for democracy. Hugh Trevor-Roper, the dean of British historians, has written, “A nation that has lost sight of its history, or is discouraged from the study of it by the desiccating professionalism [or unprofessionalism!] ofits historians, is intellectually and perhaps politically amputated. But that history must be true history in the fullest sense.” After the eleven years of research and writing that went into this book,Ji my own quest to know what truly happened in our American past has only begun. After reading all this way, so has yours. Bon voyage to us both!
Table of Contents
Introduction: Something Has Gone Very...
1. Handicapped by History: The Proces...
2. 1493: The True Importance of Chris...
3. The Truth about the First Thanksgi...
5. “Gone with the Wind”: The Invisibi...
6. John Brown and Abraham Lincoln: Th...
8. Watching Big Brother: What Textboo...
9. Down the Memory Hole: The Disappea...
10. Progress Is Our Most Important Pr...
11. Why Is History Taught Like This?
