These days, I find myself wavering between obsessively watching/listening to the news (I HAVE to know! What’s going on?) and wallowing in despair, avoiding news. Either way, I truly fear the direction we are headed in, in large part due to the lack of critical thinking and understanding of current events I see everywhere.

Back in 1995, James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me was published. It started as a survey of the dozen leading history textbooks, and over the years has been revised and updated, selling nearly two million copies, winning an American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship,  and been on the front page of the New York Times.

Now Rebecca Stefoff, a writer of nonfiction for children who previously who Howard Zinn’s bestseller A People’s History of the United States for young readers, has written an adapted version of Lies My Teacher Told Me, aimed at younger students.

It starts before the events around Columbus “discovering” America (!) and includes people and events such as the first Thanksgiving, Helen Keller, the My Lai massacre, 9/11, and the Iraq War.

Along the way, Stefoff isn’t shy about poking  holes in the common textbook versions of history. IMHO this is the book that SHOULD be used to teach U.S. history to students. I loved it. Five stars. And IMHO, although it is ostensibly for students ages 12 to 18, it is probably written at a good level for a huge number of adults as well.