# Any recommendations for a book on American History?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-recommendations-for-a-book-on-american-history/526045>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [January 22, 2010, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-recommendations-for-a-book-on-american-history/526045 "2010-01-22T22:07:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![MsRobyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/90ced4/32.png) [@MsRobyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsRobyn)\
**Post date:** [January 24, 2010, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-recommendations-for-a-book-on-american-history/526045/41 "2010-01-24T15:55:29Z")

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> [@spoke-](#):
>
> Gaaaahhhhh!!!
> 
> Not Loewen again!!
> 
> Please don’t read Loewen if you are expecting “truth.” I have checked his footnotes. In many cases the sources simply don’t say what Loewen claims they do. _Lies Across America_ is particularly egregious in this department.
> 
> His books are entertaining, but they are not good history. The man has axes to grind and books to sell.
> 
> I really wish people would stop recommending him in threads asking for _good_ history books.

I said Loewen was interesting; I never said his books should be taken as gospel truth.

He’s actually not a historian, he’s a sociologist with an interest in history education at the secondary level. His basic argument is that history as it is presented in current textbooks isn’t accurate because there are a number of entities with a vested interest in making it that way. He also argues that history should be used to teach critical thinking, and not to take any one source as absolute truth. Several of Loewen’s ideas about teaching are worth pursuing, if only to break up the monotony of lectures about minutiae.

Unfortunately, I’d forgotten about Erik Larson’s excellent narrative history books. They read like novels, but they’re meticulously researched. In addition to _Devil in the White City_ (which is about H.H. Holmes, not about [H.H. Munro](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.H._Munro)), I recommend _Thunderstruck_, which juxtaposes the story of Hawley Harvey Crippen against the invention and development of radio. (Why the initials H.H. are so common is beyond me.)

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**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\
**Post date:** [January 28, 2010, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-recommendations-for-a-book-on-american-history/526045/42 "2010-01-28T01:50:35Z")

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Author of A People’s History of the US died

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