April 3, 2003

History critic exposes ‘Lies’ your teachers told

History critic James Loewen will bring his retelling of United States’ history to California State University, Sacramento’s University Union Ballroom in a free lecture at 4 p.m., Monday, April 21.

Loewen devoted two years of research at the Smithsonian Institution before he penned the bestseller, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook Got Wrong. The book sharply critiqued many of the texts as an “embarrassing blend of bland optimism, blind nationalism, and plain misinformation.”

Loewen’s book was winner of the 1996 American Book Award, the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship, and AESA Critics Choice Award. He went on to write Lies Across America: What Our Historic Markers and Monuments Get Wrong.

Loewen is a Harvard trained sociologist who taught race relations at the University of Vermont for 20 years. He currently lives in Washington, D.C., and is researching how Americans remember their past.

Admission to the event is free and seating is first come, first served. The lecture will be followed by a book signing.

For more information, call the CSUS Multi-Cultural Center at (916) 278-6101 or visit www.csus.edu/mcult. Media assistance is available from CSUS public affairs at (916) 278-6156.

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