The 10 Big Lies About America: Combating Destructive Distortions About Our Nation (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

“It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us into trouble,nineteenth-century humorist Josh Billings remarked. “It’s the things we know that just ain’t so.”


In this bold and brilliantly argued book, acclaimed author and talk-radio host Michael Medved zeroes in on ten of the biggest fallacies that millions of Americans believe about our country—in spite of incontrovertible facts to the contrary. In The 10 Big Lies About America, Medved pinpoints the most pernicious pieces of America-bashing disinformation that pollute current debates about the economy, race, religion in politics, the Iraq war, and other contentious issues.

The myths that Medved deftly debunks include:

Myth: The United States is uniquely guilty for the crime of slavery and based its wealth on stolen African labor.

Fact: The colonies that became the United States accounted for, at most, 3 percent of the abominable international slave trade; the persistence of slavery in America slowed economic progress; and the U.S. deserves unique credit for ending slavery.

Myth: The alarming rise of big business hurts the United States and oppresses its people.

Fact: Corporations played an indispensable role in building America, and corporate growth has brought progress that benefits all with cheaper goods and better jobs.

Myth: The Founders intended a secular, not Christian, nation.

Fact: Even after ratifying the Constitution, fully half the state governments endorsed specific Chris­tian denominations. And just a day after approving the First Amendment, forbidding the establishment of religion, Congress called for a national “day of public thanksgiving and prayer” to acknowledge “the many signal favors of Almighty God.”

Myth: A war on the middle class means less comfort and opportunity for the average American.

Fact: Familiar campaign rhetoric about the victimized middle class ignores the overwhelming statistical evidence that the standard of living keeps rising for every segment of the population, as well as the real-life experience of tens of millions of middle-class Americans.

Each of the ten lies—widely believed among elites and taught as truth in universities and public schools—is a grotesque, propagandistic distortion of the historical record. For everyone who is tired of hearing America denigrated by people who don’t know what they’re talking about, The 10 Big Lies About America supplies the ammunition necessary to fire back the next time somebody tries to recycle these baseless beliefs. Medved’s witty, well-documented rebuttal is a refreshing reminder that as Americans we should feel blessed, not burdened, by our heritage.

About the Author

MICHAEL MEDVED is the host of one of the most popular talk-radio programs in the country, reaching more than four million loyal listeners. He is the bestselling author of ten other books, including Right Turns, Hollywood vs. America, and What Really Happened to the Class of ’65? A member of USA Today’s board of contributors, he also writes a weekly column for Townhall.com. For more than a decade he served as cohost of Sneak Previews, PBS’s weekly movie-review show. Medved graduated from Yale with departmental honors in American history and attended Yale Law School as well. He lives with his family in the Seattle area.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Crown Forum (November 18, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307394069
• ISBN-13: 978-0307394064
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (83 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #32,549 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

200 of 252 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Balance to What My Children Hear in School, November 19, 2008

By	Mom of Teens (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

My high-schoolers' history textbooks casually spout several of the lies that this book debunks in easily-understood, well-researched chapters. I was looking for something that would present the "other side" of what they hear, and this is authoritative and so engrossing that my son (age 16) read the entire book without stopping (even eating while he read!) as soon as we got it.

I'd heard Michael Medved on the radio and was always struck by his knowledge of history and ability to communicate, which this book confirms.

Reading The 10 Big Lies restored my positive feelings about the history of our nation, and also added to my pride and gratitude for living here. It was especially helpful to read well-supported GOOD news as a counterbalance to the negativity all over TV and the newspapers.

An uplifting book filled with useful and sometimes surprising facts--that I enjoyed reading.

129 of 165 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thank you, America, November 25, 2008

By	Jose Luis - See all my reviews

As European (Spaniard), I have enjoyed the most peaceful period in our 2000 + years of History... thanks to those vilified Americans. You helped us getting rid of fascism and communism (well, maybe you helped Franco to stay in power more than desired, but when he died, your Government was a good mediator in our transition period to democracy). And thanks to your protection, we didn't have to spend that much in weapons to scare off the soviets, thus establishing our so much well-liked welfare society(sorry, not as good as many American lefties think it is). You have been a bargain to Europe. Thank you. I will buy this book as a vaccine against the lies I have to endure in Spain regarding USA and its noble people.

95 of 124 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Effective, mostly accurate, a bit over-the-top. , December 1, 2008

By	David Marshall (Seattle area) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Recently, I was sitting in a pub in Oxford with a friend from India. He seems to find me, an American who did not share in the general "euphoria" in the UK over Obama's election, a rather exotic creature. But he made an interesting suggestion: why not look at the election of Obama, even if you don't welcome it, as a chance to reinvent what it means to be an American Christian, in a way that will connect more deeply with the world at large?

His challenge was still in the back of my mind when I read this book.

The years of American hegemony are now ending, and China and India will soon take positions on the world stage in some proportion to their vast populations. Witnessing how broadly many of the "lies" Medved describes are believed outside the US, I'd love to give Chinese and Indian friends a book like this and say: "See what America has been, at its best, for the world. As your power grows, try to emulate what you can of our successes, or do us one better."

Most of Medved's arguments are solid. He cites leading experts as well as opponents to make his case, and I think generally gets his facts right. (Notice that critics so far generally depend on vague complaints, unable it seems to point to specific errors.) Among other things, he argues that: America has seldom been as nasty to the Indians as is often claimed. The Founding Fathers were less secularist than supposed. (I wish he'd given both sides here, though -- as Steven Waldmon does in Founding Faith.) Big Business does help the country. America has seldom been truly imperialist, and has done the world a lot of good. And morality rises and falls; "a dizzying roller coaster of steep ups and downs, zigzags, climbs and reverses, and even loop-the-loops."

Medved carefully limits his claims, then backs them up with copious relevant facts. Many of his facts and anecdotes are quite interesting -- McKinley's prayer for the Phillipines, the story of how "America the Beautiful" was written, the size of houses in the 1950s compared to our "supersized" homes of today.

In the end, though, Medved is a bit too triumphalist to wish his book into the hands of Indian or Chinese friends. Sometimes he simply protests too much. Granted there was no official American policy of genocide. Granted that most Indians deaths came from disease, that others married out rather than being murdered, even that Indian cultures were "savage" in some sense. Still, the fact is, we wound up with the land (just as China ended up with Tibet, and India with Nagaland), and they wound up with treaties for half of almost extinct salmon runs. Is self-justification really the right tone to take? Having heard the same tone, and some of the same arguments, from Chinese about Tibet, I feel a bit uncomfortable with them. I would also have liked to have seen a more positive statement from Medved on the role native peoples were to play in America, culturally as well as in terms of territory.

To some extent, Medved's "American exceptionalism" cuts us off from others -- from our European roots, from human tradition as a whole. (Sociologist Rodney Stark gives a much more nuanced reading of what went into American success -- most of which is not unique to America.)

I believe America has done a great deal of good in the world. But pride comes before a fall, for countries as well as individuals. One thing that typifies nations at their greatest periods of growth -- Japan in the late 19th Century, China during the Tang and today, America at the revolution -- is a combination of confidence, and openness to outside ideas.

The challenge for conservatives, and for Christians, is to find a way of affirming our ideals, to seek reform on the model of Burke, Jefferson, Reagan, or St Paul, yet to do so in a way that helps us develop a fuller appreciate of the God-given beauties and truths in other traditions as well. Medved does seem to appreciate good in other cultures to some extent, but is unable to articulate his patriotism, and how it relates to the riches humanity shares in common, in what I found to be a fully satisfying manner. This is a generally excellent book, full of useful information, and an important answer to unfair attacks on the American heritage; but infused with a less than fully satisfying philosophy of patriotism. Maybe Medved should read G. K. Chesterton.

author, The Truth Behind the New Atheism