History book "Lies my teacher told me?" question by James W. Loewen. Help please?

Question

To all that read this book, what is the central argument or thesis of the book? I need a really good paragraph or more for this. I'm not really good with writing essays, so I really need help with the intro. Thanks to all who is willing to help, I appreciate it a lot. Have a wonderful weekend. To those who sit there, and say do your own homework. THIS IS MY FIRST TIME asking for help, and at some point in life, we're going to need assistance, we can't do everything by ourselves.

Answer 1

Here are a few sites that will give you valuable information.  The second site in particular; it contains interviews with the author as well as the author's notes.  The third reference site gives a wonderful detailed overview along with quotes.

I'm happy to steer you in the right direction; I'm sure you didn't expect anyone to write the intro for you.

Best of luck to you!

Answer 2

Here is a review from Amazon to get you started

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

   1,000 of 1,113 people found the following review helpful:

A Must Read for any Student of American History, August 6, 2001

By A Customer

As a conservative white male who views revisionist history quite skeptically, I did not expect much from this book. As a student of American history, I understood what a woeful job our textbooks and (unfortunately) our teachers do in teaching the actual history of this country, but I never expected both the depth and the level of scholarship Mr. Loewen presents in this book. It is well researched, well written and much needed. Having grown up near an Indian reservation, my own personal studies in original sources confirm how accurate Mr. Loewen really is. The book is hardly "political correctness" run amuck as suggested by one review. And his point is not to paint America as evil or bash Christian Europeans as two other reviews would lead us to believe. This type of simple minded attack does not tell us anything about the book, but rather betrays the reviewers' own entrenched viewpoints - viewpoints that certainly will not be changed by exposure to the truth. In fact, the criticisms make Mr. Loewen's point almost better than he can as to why history is taught in feel-good myths rather than truth. Yes, Mr. Loewen treats certain issues and not others. He tells us he is doing so several times throughout the book, and makes apologies for it. This is not intended to be a replacement for a full history of the United States. Mr. Loewen makes good and valid suggestions as to such replacements. It is not even intended to be a complete coverage of all the things our history texts get wrong. He would need several more volumes for that, and even then would get some of it wrong. For those who actually read the book (and many reviewers obviously did not), he admits all of this. Mr. Loewen's book is an important start. But it is only a start. One reviewer, in criticising the book, stated that we must learn from our past. But this is exactly the point of the book. We must and can learn from our past, but only if we have the objectivity and moral courage to accept what that past was. As a white Christian Anglo-Saxon male, I feel no need to beat myself up as a result of the deeds done by white Christian Anglo-Saxon males who are long dead. But I do feel the need to move forward with as good an understanding as I can have of the cultural and personal histories that cause people to act as they do - especially those whose backgrounds are so different from my own.