T4CW Oct. 26 09: Jim Loewen

Jim Loewen is best known as the author of "Lies my Teacher Told Me" a hugely influential look at 12 leading high school history texts comparing what they prioritize, what they leave out, and what they just plain make up. He's written a follow-up, Teaching What Really Happened, and we'll discuss the new book, but he's also the author of Sundown Towns, Lies Across America, coauthored Mississippi: Conflict and Change, which won an award for Best Southern Nonfiction but was kept out of public school classrooms by the State of Mississippi, which objected to a picture of a lynching scene. This lead to a 1st Amendment lawsuit, Loewen et al v. Turnipseed, et al. He also wrote The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White, Social Science in the Courtroom, and The Truth About Columbus. He also taught race relations for twenty years at the University of Vermont, and wrote the introduction to a book called "White Men Challenging Racism."

With all that said, Lowen's new book is called "Teaching What Really Happened: How To Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks and Get Students Excited About Doing History" a focused how-to guide for teachers with case studies and virtual lesson plans. The Introduction is titled "history as weapon." We start there.