The original version of this book was one I read in college. It was an eye opener, making a big impact as I started to critically analyze the way we’d been taught about history. I am happy to report that the graphic novel version is just as compelling, and because it contains so many visual elements, I found it to be even more “sticky” in my brain. I think this is a great example of how the graphic novel format can bring content to students that may not otherwise feel as accessible. ( )

A powerful indictment of the way that American history textbooks present the subject: as a long list of facts to memorize, with little analysis, and little encouragement to think critically about big ideas, the causes of events, or how past events affect the present. History does affect the present, and does matter to our lives, and yet textbooks shy away from controversy and discomfort, often championing myths and creating heroes instead of illuminating leaders' flaws and the way their ideas changed (or didn't) over time.

Ought to be required reading. See also: America Redux by Ariel Aberg-Riger

No back matter; Powell refers readers to Loewen's most recent edition for source notes and references.

Quotes/notes

Textbook authors almost never use the present to illuminate the past, and seldom use the past to help offer insight into our present. (3)

Americans must learn the historical patterns of racist presidential leadership directly inspiring a racist public response....However, in order to do this, textbooks would need to make plain the cause-and-effect relationship between leader and followers. (12)

Heroification

Cherishing Columbus is a characteristic of white history, not American history in general. (40)

The problem isn't so much those estimates [of the population of the Americas before Columbus's arrival] as the attitude that presenting a controversy - or inviting students to ask those questions and come to their own conclusions - is somehow radical! (49)

When textbooks promote these attitudes ["God on our side"] through their Pilgrim myth, they leave students less able to learn from, and deal with, people from other cultures. (54)

This original sin [what white people did to Native Americans] is our past, and we must acknowledge it. (60)

Somehow...America ended up with 4,000,000 enslaved people, but no enslavers. This is part of a pattern: Anything bad in American history happened anonymously... (98)

....but the authors make no connection between the U.S. failure to guarantee Black rights in 1877 and the need for a civil rights movement in the twentieth century.
Nothing ever causes anything. Things just happen. (110)

No book can convey the depths of the Black experience without including material from the oppressed group - yet no textbooks from my original sample let Black people speak for themselves about the conditions they faced. (115)

the invisibility of antiracism in American history textbooks (119)

Ideas have power - and ideological contradiction is terribly important in the course of history. Yet history textbooks give us no way to begin understanding the role of ideas in our past, or struggles over their contradictions. (130)

Textbook silence on war crimes and violence against civilians makes it much more difficult to understand the antiwar movement. (198)

But the mere passage of time doesn't provide perspective in itself. Information is both lost and gained over time. (211)

Such thinking might be nationalistic, but it's hardly patriotic. Nationalism doesn't encourage critique of our country or work to make it better - it only serves us in the short term. (216)

Presenting a nation without sin mostly leaves students ignorant, unable to understand why others are upset with the United States. This kind of presentation fuels ethnocentrism in students, too - and decreases their ability to learn from others. (218)

When textbooks downplay the...recent past...they make it hard for students to connect the past with issues affecting our present and future. This failure only encourages students to consider all history irrelevant. (223)

Tragedy of the commons (233)

Achieving justice in the present helps reveal the truth about the past....telling the truth about the past helps achieve justice in the present. (260-261)

History is central to our understanding of ourselves and our society. All Americans should be able to command the power of history. They should know basic facts about the United States, and understand the historical processes that have shaped and caused those factual events. They should also know some of the social forces and ideas which have affected their own lives. (261) ( )

James W. Loewen and Nate Powell’s Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbooks Got Wrong adapts Loewen’s earlier texts about the poor presentation of American history in textbooks found throughout America’s public schools. Powell – best known for working with John Lewis in his three-volume graphic memoir, March – illustrated and adapted the book following a conversation with Loewen and states that it should be read as a companion to Loewen’s other texts (p. 263). They follow the most significant myths in U.S. history, from Christopher Columbus to the First Thanksgiving, Native American history to the Civil War and abolition, social class and government power to the recent past. Critical to their arguments are the simple yet regularly overlooked theses that “ideas actually matter” (p. 135), “events of one period might cause events later in history” (p. 202), progress narratives primarily serve to get textbooks adopted by schools rather than to effectively convey history (p. 239), and history textbook writers take into account social mores far more than any other subject (p. 247). All of this serves to turn students off to the study of history and misrepresent documented facts in order to serve those in power. Loewen and Powell want their readers to appreciate history and see it as a living field worthy of serious investigation. This book is a critical text for anyone teaching history and for those who found themselves disappointed with their textbooks. ( )

This graphic non-fiction work seems meant to provide an introduction to many stories in the history of the United States that have been elided, ignored, or mistold by American high school history textbooks. Since it's only pointing out omissions and giving a very light gloss on what students could be taught, it's really only enough to start one's interest in these historical events and people—it would have benefited from the bibliographies and "further readings" that are apparently present in the original book by James W. Loewen, which this adapts (and which I haven't read). Without having read the original, I really appreciated the visual element of the storytelling here. ( )