Lies My Teacher Told Me For Young Readers: Everything American History Textbooks Get Wrong

Description

Based on the best-selling book in the history of The New Press: Lies My Teacher Told Me has sold nearly two million copies since it first published. With the paperback reissue in September 2018, we expect Jim Loewen's classic to be as popular and well-loved as ever and for this adaptation to find a wide audience of young readers. Adaptor's expertise: Rebecca Stefoff has tremendous expertise in adapting popular works of history (and science) for young readers, having adapted the works of Howard Zinn, Jared Diamond, and others. This fall, Simon & Schuster will publish her adaptation of Darwin's On the Origin of Species. She is well known in the all-important YA library market. Platform: The author is nationally known for his scholarship and his unique take on the state of American history textbooks. Speaking: The author lectures widely and his commentaries appear regularly on the History News Network. We will work with the author to get him to attend high-profile conferences of educators who will welcome and swarm to this book. Continued praise: Lies My Teacher Told Me was recently lavishly praised by New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, who credited Jim Loewen with having been an inspiration to him (along with The New Jim Crow) in taking down racist monuments in New Orleans.

James W. Loewen is the bestselling and award-winning author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, Lies Across America, Lies My Teacher Told Me About Christopher Columbus, Sundown Towns, and Lies My Teacher Told Me: Young Readers' Edition (all from The New Press). He also wrote Teaching What Really Happened and The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White and edited The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader. He has won the American Book Award, the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship, the Spirit of America Award from the National Council for the Social Studies, and the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award. Loewen is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Vermont and lives in Washington, DC.

Praise for Lies My Teacher Told Me: Young Readers' Edition: Named one of the "Ultimate Guidebooks for LBGTQ+ Youth in 2019" by the Advocate "LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME: YOUNG READERS' EDITION is the perfect gift to help the young historian enthusiast get woke with the facts rather than a fictitious narrative."-The Advocate "[The book] not only imparts vital history left out of textbooks, it also prepares the next generation to be critical readers of the media." -Rethinking Schools "Evocative and thought-provoking, this is what history should be." -Booklist "Accessible, eye-opening. . . . A cogent argument for studying historical nuances. [Loewen] argues that young people should not be deprived of hearing the incredible truth of American history in service to avoidance of controversy or blinkered, parochial nationalism." -Kirkus Reviews "Powerful . . . it serves as a crucial counter-textbook to provide a more realistic and critical narrative about the American past." -Truthdig "Here is a call to action that will have students furiously turning the pages and inspire them to question everything. Young people: Read this book, and then talk back to your history teacher!" -Jesse Hagopian, co-editor of Teaching for Black Lives and high school history teacher "Lies My Teacher Told Me was a big inspiration to me as a young writer, and I'm excited to see this new young readers' edition. Loewen's fascinating book is full of little-known stories, debunked myths, provocative ideas-and, best of all, it challenges readers to think for themselves!" -Steve Sheinkin, author of Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War "The young readers' edition of James Loewen's classic text Lies My Teacher Told Me imparts vital history in a thoroughly engaging way. Countless teachers have tossed their textbooks aside after reading Lies My Teacher Told Me and now younger readers will be able to learn the truth about history, including race, land, the climate, foreign policy, political leadership and much, much more." -Deborah Menkart, executive director, Teaching for Change, and co-director, Zinn Education Project "True stories-otherwise known as history-need to be told transparently, in all their messy, marvelous, multi-faceted glory. Loewen's Lies tells the truth to young readers, creating a new crop of critical thinkers and active citizens." -Tanya Lee Stone, NAACP Image Award winner and Sibert medalist "James Loewen's book is a lively and trustworthy guide to what's wrong with the way we teach history, starting with the textbooks we ask our students to read in school. That students find him irresistible is not hard to explain. Loewen himself is forever young at heart: energetic, curious, skeptical, irreverent, and yet deeply idealistic. Artfully adapted for young readers by Rebecca Stefoff, the text has not been dumbed down one bit." -James Goodman, professor of history at Rutgers University, Newark, and Pulitzer Prize finalist