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45 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very valuable and interesting book, October 10, 2009
For all the shrill complaints, you'll notice no one points out any errors in this book. Indeed, most of the factual history in the book is solid and not even seriously debated by historians. For example - numerous memorials notwithstanding - all serious historians agree that the Confederates, not the Union, burned Richmond and many other Southern cities as they abandoned them. I learned a lot from this book, and I haven't found any serious problems with his facts for for the items I've looked into - although I don't think *everyone* would agree that President Buchanan was gay.
Like his earlier book, one of his central points is that accurate and complete history - with all its controversy and complexity - is simply more interesting than the sanitized (and sometimes just plain wrong) version we get in school or from historical monuments. I strongly agree, but some people are very uncomfortable with this view, as is clear from the other comments. He doesn't say our Founding Fathers were "despicable", merely that they were human beings with human flaws - some of them large. For example, he has a lot of good things to say about Thomas Jefferson, but it's a pretty serious omission to sweep the fact that he owned slaves under the rug. If you want to hear only good things about our major historical figures, do yourself a favor and *do not read this book*.
He does have a serious axe to grind with the South, but remember he's competing with books like "Slavery: as it was", which is still trying to paint an idyllic picture of black simpletons who really preferred being slaves (read some of the glowing reviews *that* book gets). We would probably complain if Germany still had monuments to Nazis, yet the South has many monuments vicious and outspoken racists.
That said, the book does have a few flaws. First of all, he really beats some things to death. For example, he objects to the use of the term "discover" for anyplace where Indians were already living. Fair enough, but he devotes quite a bit of the book to going through these on a case by case basis, and it just gets repetitive. I would have been happy for him to have simply made his case and then given a short list of examples.
Second, like his first book, he does interject a bit too much of his personal politics. Usually, this is in the form of explaining how certain monuments came to be, but sometimes it's about monuments that aren't necessarily inaccurate, but just "incomplete" in his view. While I don't think his views are necessarily wrong, these observations give the book a biased tone that it doesn't need to have. The book would still have plenty to say if it stuck strictly to facts and avoided analysis.
So, definitely read the book. Check the facts yourself if you don't believe them, and take the politics with a grain of salt.
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164 of 186 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great fun -- and look who it rattled..., August 28, 2000
This review is from: Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong (Hardcover)
If you have any doubts about the lightning rod James Loewen has given us in this book and its predecessor, "Lies My Teacher Told Me," take a look at the few low ratings given by other Amazon readers. The code words are all there -- he's an ivory tower academic, he's anti-confederate, it's all "political correctness," he's racist because he's "anti-white," and so on. Cages have been rattled, it's as simple as that. Some cherished myths go down hard in these books. 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.
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91 of 104 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Impressively Accurate History Text, October 14, 2000
This review is from: Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong (Hardcover)
After reading some of the reviews here, I was a bit concerned that perhaps Mr. Loewen might have skewed his history a bit to help make his admittedly entertaining points. While the book's essays are copiously footnoted, and each essay contains its own bibliography (often running to half a dozen or more citations even for a small three or four page essay), some of the criticisms of Mr. Loewen's work still gave me pause. Since I am merely a casual student of history, I decided to take my questions to the most knowledgeable authority I knew: a history teacher friend whose favorite pastime seems to be finding the subtle historical distortions in otherwise excellent historical and historical-fiction movies like "Gettysburg" and "Saving Private Ryan". 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.
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