Summary
The first chapter serves to dispel several notions about the heroes that America holds up, focusing on Helen Keller and Woodrow Wilson. The book describes how Hellen Keller was much more than a young girl who learned to communicate despite being blind and deaf.
She was an outspoken figure who graduated from Radcliffe College in 1904 and went on to become politically radical, championing Socialism and supporting the Russian Revolution. The author attributes her socialism to her being handicapped and aiding others who were like her. As she was helping others, she realized that those who are handicapped are disproportionately poor, and she grew to believe that our society needed radical change. She visited many sweatshops and slums and said afterwards of the experience, "If I could not see it, I could smell it" (12).
The chapter then turns to Woodrow Wilson, who is celebrated as the president who led the country through WWI and beginning international diplomacy. However, Wilson segregated his officials in government, was a fan of Birth of a Nation (the movie that re-inspired the KKK), and repeatedly invaded Latin American nations from 1914 to 1918.
The author goes on to note that some people, like Betsy Ross, are glorified without truly having contributed much to the society. The story is that Ross made the first American flag, but Loewen argues that this is a myth created by her descendants which continues due to the need for stories about women having played a role in the early nation. If, in this mythology, Washington is the Father of the nation, then Betsy Ross is its Virgin Mary.
The second chapter debunks the hero Christopher Columbus, pointing out that students are given the barest of facts and virtually no context. The idea that Columbus "discovered" America is erroneous, as people were already living here, and other explorers had ventured this way before.
The author expands the context for the Columbus story, detailing how it was a Portuguese fleet, blockading the Red Sea, that caused European nations to seek another route to the Indies, not Turkish fleets. He criticizes textbooks' lack of attention to the leaps and bounds in military technology that allowed Europeans to win wars much more easily than before.
He also points out the advance of social technologies such as bureaucracy, double-entry bookkeeping, printing and the positive valuation of wealth and power as a way to win esteem in this life and the next.
Christianity was also a factor, as it allowed Europeans to rationalize conquest and explain virulent diseases as God's will. The author also points out that Columbus was far from the first to make it to America, as there are Roman coins found in South America and Native Americans once were shipwrecked and ended up in Holland.
Analysis
Loewen was a professor for several years at various universities. He is an expert in his field. Loewen begins his book with a quote and a dedication: "Every teacher, every student of history, every citizen should read this book. — HOWARD ZINN ... Dedicated to all American history teachers who teach against their textbooks" (n.p.). The quote by Zinn recommends the book to the reader, even though the reader has already picked up the book, which suggests that the author is really pushing for the person to purchase the book. This is interesting to note, as Loewen later criticizes many authors of textbooks as being too concerned with profit and approval- yet this quote betrays that those are his priorities to some degree as well.
In dedicating his book to all those who teach against textbooks, Loewen is honoring those who rebel against convention in pursuit of the truth and of good education. The dedication perhaps implies that those who do not teach against their textbooks are not worthy of being honored. Though Loewen points out flaws in the textbooks he studies, it's also clear that even these textbooks contain valuable information. This ought to make the reader pause, and wonder whether Loewen's own book is to be trusted. Here Loewen's book leads us to see his overall point in a more surprising way: readers should read books with a skeptical and inquiring eye—even Loewen's own book.
He then includes his acknowledgements, here at the beginning, instead of at the end, showing that he is grateful for the help he has received and wants to ensure that it is noticed. Acknowledgements are surely read more when they are at the front, not tucked in the back among the many indices and references.
The beginning of the book proper sets up Loewen's later claims by describing how biased and flawed the authors of other textbooks are; indeed, his contempt for the authors and their attention to getting approval by committees is barely masked. The author ensures that the reader is aware that there is a great need for his book, no matter how shocked they may be about its contents—he is arming himself against their criticism even before they have had a chance to levy it.
The author dissects the language of each of the 12 textbooks he examined to see exactly how they skate around the touchier subjects and divert blame for bad historical events. One prominent example Loewen gives is from a textbook that describes events in Latin America that occurred under Woodrow Wilson's presidency, without ever mentioning that he invaded and so directly caused the events (10). Loewen's tone is often morally loaded, displaying his indignation that this kind of scholarship has been going on for so long. He uses repetition throughout to hammer home his points.
Loewen goes on to dissect exactly how and why the rise of Europe was not a given at all, but rather depended on circumstance and chance (210). By including historical context and illuminating information about the advanced technology of Asian and Latin American civilizations, he shows the reader that Europeans were in fact a bit behind in the global scheme. The author shows that Columbus, one of the so-called great European explorers, should not be depicted as a heroic narrative, but instead a complex story that reflects the disease, enslavement, and chaos he caused (26, 244). Lastly, the author demonstrates the root of racism in America, showing that by lumping everyone in one seemingly homogenous group, it becomes easier to justify their mistreatment. For example, the lack of individual and tribal names when describing Native Americans, serves to "otherize" them and emphasize the Europeans as the heroes, with names and backstories, as the heroes of history.
