Teaching What Really Happened: How to Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks and Get Students Excited About Doing History (Multicultural Education Series)

In this follow-up to his landmark bestseller, Lies My Teacher Told Me, James Loewen continues to break silences and change our perspectives on U.S. history. Loewen takes history textbooks to task for their perpetuations of myth and their lack of awareness of today’s multicultural student audience (not to mention the astonishing number of “facts” they just get plain wrong).

“How did people get here?” “Why did Europe win?” “Why did the South secede?” In Teaching What Really Happened, Loewen goes beyond the usual textbook-dominated viewpoints to illuminate a wealth of intriguing, often hidden facts about America’s past. Calling for a new way to study history, this book will help readers move beyond traditional textbooks to tackle difficult but important topics, like the American Indian experience, slavery, and race relations. Throughout, Loewen shows time and again how “teaching what really happened” connects better with all kinds of students to get them excited about history.