Lies My Teacher Told Me (thing)

The author is a history professor, James Loewen, who also wrote The Truth About Columbus, which is also a chapter of this book.

I didn't know:

• Helen Keller was a socialist,
• The United States dropped three times as many tons of explosives in Vietnam 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, and
• The first colony to legalize slavery was not Virginia but Massachusetts.

Loewen basically looks at 10 US high school history textbooks and deconstructs their information. His basic thesis is that history textbook writers are encouraged to lie to maintain a myth of America that is simply foolish. An excellent read.