Scan barcode
tophat8855's review against another edition
4.0
Really good as an audiobook- I highly recommend listening to this because my friends who have read it say it's dense and feels like a slog. As an audiobook, it was perfect to ingest. Obviously, not for faint of heart because a lot of things we get history wrong on are things of which we don't want hear the truth. I liked the west to east format and the follow up from 2019 with how some of the markers/statues/museums have been updated since he wrote the book in 1998.
suebrownreads's review against another edition
4.0
Wow, Mr. Loewen really does his homework. He must have put years of research into this book! I really enjoyed learning about historical markers from around the country that are erroneous or misleading and need to be corrected or removed. The reason I gave this a 4 instead of a 5 is because it does get somewhat repetitive. I hope the author has addressed all of these issues with each state. The best thing I can do is to probably address the issues in my own state also. This book can certainly be a call to action for the integrity of our historical markers in America. These markers go a long way in educating folks and they should be accurate and comprehensive in their content. Thank you for your hard work Mr. Loewen!
eljaspero's review against another edition
4.0
Loewen proves, once again, that his reputation for heavyhandedness is entirely justified. He wears his biases proudly, and is unafraid to beat his reader over the head with them. That said, this book is also a potent reminder of just how bad a job we often do in public history. I wish I could believe that many of his case studies have since been revised, but know full well how much longer the road to full historic representation in America is going to be. Would recommend that students (and practitioners!) of public history suffer through at least half of this, but others should probably look elsewhere for their history fix.
lauriestein's review against another edition
4.0
And this would get five stars if it contained a little more constructive criticism/understanding of the challenges historic sites face in getting their funding from either private constituencies or government bureaucracies with certain biases.
lurdesabruscato's review against another edition
5.0
With details from primary sources and expert analysis of more than 100 markers, statues, monuments and museums, Loewen concisely explains how these symbols misrepresent the past and the real reasons why their sponsors wanted them to be put up in the first place. This is the stuff that should be in history books but isn't.
jeffmauch's review against another edition
4.0
If you've read Loewen's first book, "Lies My Teacher Told Me," you'll have a pretty good idea how this book is going to read. In this sequel of sorts, Loewen takes us state to state to discuss monuments and and historic places and how they're misrepresented to the public in a number of ways. Some are lies of omission while others are outright fabrications of event that never even happened. For the most part, this was a pretty good read, but it gets long and repetitive after a while. It's no surprise how many of the monuments mentioned are confederate or slavery related in nature and include astonishing fabrications. Many of these happen to be in the south and were the workings of the Daughters of the Confederacy, which if you're not aware of their way of manipulating history for their own motives and purposes, this book will be an eye opener for you. Overall there's a lot of good research and fact finding here. It's amazing how much of what's written on historical markers and told to us by tour guides is taken as fact, when it is anything but. 3.5/4
pocketvolcano's review against another edition
5.0
I got this after “Lies my Teacher Told Me” and was not disappointed. Even better is the fact he did an updated version after the events in Charlottesville in 2017. Although some markers have changed & there is more of a push after 2017 to change things, America still has a long way to go to portray accurate history across the landscape.
kwough's review against another edition
5.0
I really enjoyed this book. The writing style is clear and the author has a sense of humor along with a welcome moral compass. I appreciated the first few chapters to set the stage before diving into the individual monuments and sites in question. The footnotes were helpful when I felt like flipping forward, but not essential if I didn't. My former university teaches a class in which monuments and memorials are covered, and I have already recommended this book as a great supplement for that experience. Finally, as a new resident of the Lake Placid area, I was interested to see the John Brown Historic Site as one of the areas noted, and I am eager to visit the site and see it for myself.
leahralph's review against another edition
5.0
A fascinating book that rationally and logically presents the argument for removing statues and historical markers that celebrate ‘false’ history. Not being from the states but having lived there I found the subject matter in this book not only interesting but the arguments contemporary and relevant to our history in Australia. A great read. Highly recommend. Thanks so much to NetGalley for the ARC.