Description
In Lies Across America, James W. Loewen continues his mission, begun in his American Book Award-winning and bestselling Lies My Teacher Told Me, of overturning the myths and misinformation, Lies Across America looks at more than one hundred sites where history is told on the landscape, including historical markers, monuments, museums, historic houses, forts, and ships. Loewen uses his investigation of these public versions of history, often literally written in stone, to correct historical interpretations that are profoundly wrong, to tell neglected but important stories about the American past, and, most importantly, to raise questions about what we as a nation chose to commemorate and how, contrasted to what we omit and cover over. Lies Across America offers startling revelations about sites we think we know, such as Valley Forge, Abraham Lincoln's log cabin, and the aircraft carrier Intrepid. It also tells of notable events and individuals that should be commemorated on the landscape but aren't. When it was originally published in 1999, Lies Across America was the first book to call for the removal of Confederate monuments as examples of bad history and white supremacy. This new, twentieth-anniversary edition is completely revised, updated, and more timely than ever, including: A completely new chapter on "Public History After Charlottesville" ; New markers and monuments that remedy some of the omissions the first edition lamented; Dramatic improvements in the treatment of slavery at some plantation homes; Examples of how one person can spark a permanent change in favor of truth on the landscape; Extended treatment of why Confederate monuments need to be toppled from positions of power and influence, and what needs to happen to them after their removal. In a work that the late historian Ira Berlin called "a great book, a fun book, and an important book," Loewen persuasively argues that a public history that tells the truth about the past makes it easier to achieve social justice in the present. --
