Winner of the 1996 American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship

Americans have lost touch with their history, and in this thought-provoking book, Professor James Loewen shows why. After surveying twelve leading high school American history texts, he has concluded that not one does a decent job of making history interesting or memorable. Marred by an embarrassing combination of blind patriotism, mindless optimism, sheer misinformation, and outright lies, these books omit almost all the ambiguity, passion, conflict, and drama from our past. In ten powerful chapters, Loewen reveals that:

The United States dropped three times as many tons of explosives in Vietman as it dropped in all theaters of World War II, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Ponce de Leon went to Florida mainly to capture Native Americans as slaves for Hispaniola, not to find the mythical fountain of youth

Woodrow Wilson, known as a progressive leader, was in fact a white supremacist who personally vetoed a clause on racial equality in the Covenant of the League of Nations

The first colony to legalize slavery was not Virginia but Massachusetts

From the truth about Columbus's historic voyages to an honest evaluation of our national leaders, Loewen revives our history, restoring to it the vitality and relevance it truly possesses.

詹姆斯·洛溫（James W.Loewen）：美國著名學者，佛濛特大學社會學退休教授，現居華盛頓。

詹姆斯·洛溫的其他著作有:

《謊言遍布美國：我們的曆史景點中的錯誤》（Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong）

《老師告訴我的關於剋裏斯托弗·哥倫布的謊言》（Lies My Teacher Told Me About Christopher Columbus）

《密西西比華人：夾在黑人與白人之間》（The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White）

《密西西比：衝突與變革》（Mississippi: Conflict and Change）[與查爾斯·薩裏斯（Charles Sallis）等閤著]

《重新思考我們的過去：識彆美國曆史中的事實、虛構與謊言》（Rethinking Our Past: Recognizing Facts, Fiction, and Lies in American History）

《審判席上的社會科學》（Social Science in the Courtroom）

《日落之鎮：美國種族主義的隱秘嚮度》（Sundown Towns:A Hidden Dimension of American Racism）

馬萬利：北京師範大學曆史學碩士、博士，現任職於南昌航空大學，從事學術譯介與曆史教學。另譯有《行為辯證法》等作品。

劉北成：畢業於北京師範大學，現任清華大學曆史係教授，譯有（德）安德烈·貢德·弗蘭剋《白銀資本：重視經濟全球化當中的東方》、（英）湯因比《曆史研究》、（美）彼得《啓濛運動百科全書》等二十餘部作品。