We have the sad duty to report the passing of James W. Loewen, the author of multiple books on ...

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Kevin M. Kruse Retweeted

“lies my teacher told me” was a formative book for my teenaged self and “sundown towns” was just as important for my adult self

We have the sad duty to report the passing of James W. Loewen, the author of multiple books on the distortion of history in the public sphere, and a longtime HNN contributor. We extend our condolences to his family and to those whose lives he touched.

Link to tweet

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1. 🕯

[crickets]

2. .

[Shell_Seas]

3. Oh nooo. This makes me sad. He was an amazing author

[SouthBayDem]

4. Associated Press obituary

James W. Loewen, wrote ‘Lies My Teacher Told Me,’ dead at 79

NEW YORK (AP) — James W. Loewen, whose million-selling “Lies My Teacher Told Me” books challenged traditional ideas and knowledge on everything from Thanksgiving to the Iraq War, has died. He was 79.

Loewen’s publisher, New Press, announced that the author died Thursday at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. A professor emeritus at the University of Vermont who lived in Washington, D.C., he had been diagnosed two years ago with Stage IV bladder cancer, enough time for him to post “Notes toward an obituary” on his website.

“Telling the truth about the past helps cause justice in the present,” was his guiding principle, he wrote. “Achieving justice in the present helps us tell the truth about the past.”

Loewen’s “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong” was published in 1995 and became a favorite of students and former students as it challenged what Loewen considered a white, Eurocentric view of the past and the stale prose and bland presentations of classroom books.

Professor Loewen was still tweeting as recently as this week. I'm stunned to hear about his passing. Lies is such an excellent book I bought it a few years back. It really shatters the myth of public schools being liberal; many of them have been teaching a romanticized, jingoistic version of our history. No wonder so many are scared of "critical race theory".