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), 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.)