In Lies Across America, James W. Loewen continues his mission, begun in the award-winning Lies My Teacher Told Me, of overturning the myths and misinformation that too often pass for American history. Lies Across America is a one-of-a-kind examination of sites all over the country where history is literally written on the landscape, including historical markers, monuments, historic houses, forts, and ships. With one hundred entries, drawn from every state, Loewen reveals that:
The USS Intrepid, the "feel-good" war museum, celebrates its glorious service in World War II but nowhere mentions the three tours it served in Vietnam.
The Jefferson Memorial misquotes from the Declaration of Independence and skews Thomas Jefferson's writings to present this conflicted slaveowner as an outright abolitionist.
Abraham Lincoln had been dead for thirty years when his birthplace cabin was built!
Lies Across America is a reality check for anyone who has ever sought to learn about America through our public sites and markers. Entertaining and enlightening, it is destined to change the way we see our country.

The USS Intrepid, the "feel-good" war museum, celebrates its glorious service in World War II but nowhere mentions the three tours it served in Vietnam.

The Jefferson Memorial misquotes from the Declaration of Independence and skews Thomas Jefferson's writings to present this conflicted slaveowner as an outright abolitionist.

Abraham Lincoln had been dead for thirty years when his birthplace cabin was built!

Lies Across America is a reality check for anyone who has ever sought to learn about America through our public sites and markers. Entertaining and enlightening, it is destined to change the way we see our country.

In What Ways Were We Warped?

Some Functions of Public History

The Sociology of Historic Sites

Historic Sites Are Always a Tale of Two Eras

Hieratic Scale in Historic Monuments

The Far West

1 Alaska Denali (Mt. McKinley): The Tallest Mountain — The Silliest Naming

2 Hawaii Honolulu: King Kamehameha I, The Roman!

3 California Sacramento: The Flat Earth Myth on the West Coast

4 California Sacramento: Exploiting vs. Exterminating the Natives

5 California San Francisco: China Beach Leaves Out the Bad Parts

6 California Downieville: Killing a Man Is Not News

7 Oregon La Grande: Don't "Discover" 'Til You See the Eyes of the Whites!

8 Washington Cowlitz County: No Communists Here!

9 Washington Centralia: Using Nationalism to Redefine a Troublesome Statue

10 Nevada Hickison Summit: What We Know and What We Don't Know About Rock Art

11 Nevada Nye County: Don't Criticize Big Brother

The Mountains

12 Idaho Almo: Circle the Wagons, Boys — It's Tourist Season

13 Utah North of St. George: Bad Things Happen in the Passive Voice

14 Arizona Navajo Reservation: Calling Native Americans Bad Names

15 Montana Helena: No Confederate Dead? No Problem! Invent Them!

16 Wyoming South Pass City: A Woman Shoulda Done It!

17 Colorado Pagosa Springs: Tall Tales in the West

18 Colorado Leadville: Licking the Corporate Hand That Feeds You

19 New Mexico Alcalde: The Footloose Statue

The Great Plains

20 Oklahoma Oklahoma City: The Oklahoma State History Museum Confederate Room Tells No History

21 Kansas Gardner: Which Came First, Wilderness or Civilization?

22 Nebraska Red Cloud: No Lesbians on the Landscape

23 South Dakota Brookings: American Indians Only Roved for About a Hundred Years

24 North Dakota Devils Lake: The Devil Is Winning, Six to One

The Midwest

25 Minnesota St. Paul: "Serving the Cause of Humanity"

26 Iowa Muscatine: Red Men Only — No Indians Allowed

27 Missouri Hannibal: Domesticating Mark Twain

28 Wisconsin Racine: Not the First Auto

29 Illinois Chicago: America's Most Toppled Monument

30 Indiana Graysville: Coming into Indiana Minus a Body Part

31 Indiana Indianapolis: The Invisible Empire Remains Invisible

32 Kentucky Lexington: Putting the He in Hero

33 Kentucky Hodgenville: Abraham Lincoln's Birthplace Cabin — Built Thirty Years after His Death!

34 Michigan Dearborn: Honoring a Segregationist

35 Ohio Delaware: Who Menaced Whom?

The South

36 Texas Gainesville: "No Nation Rose So White and Fair; None Fell So Free of Crime"

37 Texas Alba: The Only Honest Sundown Town in the United States

38 Texas Pittsburg: It Never Got Off the Ground

39 Texas Fredericksburg: The Real War Will Never Get into the War Museums

40 Texas Galveston: This Building Used to Be a Hardware Store

41 Arkansas Grant County: Which Came First, the Statue or the Oppression?

42 Arkansas Little Rock: Men Make History; Women Make Wives

43 Louisiana Laplace: Suppressing a Slave Revolt for the Second Time

44 Louisiana Colfax: Mystifying the Colfax Riot and Lying About Reconstruction

45 Louisiana New Orleans: The White League Begins to Take a Beating

46 Louisiana Baton Rouge: The Toppled "Darky"

47 Louisiana Fort Jackson: Let Us Now Praise Famous Thieves

48 Mississippi Hazlehurst: The End of Reconstruction

49 Mississippi Itta Bena: A Black College Celebrates White Racists

50 Alabama Calhoun County: If Russia Can Do It, Why Can't We?

51 Alabama Tuscumbia: Confining Helen Keller Under House Arrest

52 Alabama Scottsboro: Famous Everywhere but at Home

53 Tennessee Fort Pillow: Remember Fort Pillow!

54 Tennessee Woodbury: Forrest Rested Here

55 Georgia Stone Mountain: A Confederate-KKK Shrine Encounters Turbulence

56 Florida Near Cedar Key: The Missing Town of Rosewood

57 South Carolina Beech Island: The Beech Island Agricultural Club Was Hardly What the Marker Implies

58 South Carolina Fort Mill: To the Loyal Slaves

59 South Carolina Columbia: Who Burned Columbia?

60 North Carolina Bentonville Battlefield: The Last Major Confederate Offensive of the Civil War

61 Virginia Alexandria: The Invisible Slave Trade

62 Virginia Alexandria: The Clash of the Martyrs

63 Virginia Richmond: "One of the Great Female Spies of All Times"

64 Virginia Richmond: Slavery and Redemption

65 Virginia Richmond: The Liberation of Richmond

66 Virginia Richmond: Abraham Lincoln Walks Through Richmond

67 Virginia Appomattox: Getting Even the Numbers Wrong

68 Virginia Stickleyville: A Sign of Good Breeding

The Atlantic States

69 West Virginia Union: Is California West of the Alleghenies?

70 District of Columbia Jefferson Memorial: Juxtaposing Quotations to Misrepresent a Founding Father

71 District of Columbia Lincoln Memorial: A Product of Its Time and All Time

72 Maryland Hampton: "No History to Tell"

73 Delaware Reliance: The Reverse Underground Railroad

74 Pennsylvania Philadelphia: Telling Amusing Incidents for the Tourists

75 Pennsylvania Valley Forge: George Washington's Desperate Prayer

76 Pennsylvania Lancaster: "You're Here to See the House"

77 Pennsylvania Gettysburg: South Carolina Defines the Civil War in 1965

78 Pennsylvania Philadelphia: Remember the "Splendid Little War" — Forget the Tawdry Larger Wars

79 Pennsylvania Philadelphia: Celebrating Illegal Submarine Warfare

80 New Jersey Trenton: The Pilgrims and Religious Freedom

81 New York Manhattan: Making Native Americans Look Stupid

82 New York Alabama: Which George Washington?

83 New York North Elba: John Brown's Plaque Puts Blacks at the Bottom!

84 New York Manhattan: The Union League Club: Traitors to Their Own Cause

85 New York Manhattan: Selective Memory at USS Intrepid

New England

86 Connecticut Darien: Omitting the Town's Continuing Claim to Fame

87 Massachusetts Boston: The Problem of the Common

88 Massachusetts Amherst: Celebrating Genocide

89 Massachusetts Boston: What a Monument Ought to Be

90 Vermont Burlington: Shards of Minstrelsy on a Far-North Campus

91 New Hampshire Peterborough and Dublin: Local History Wars

92 New Hampshire Concord: "Effective Political Leader"

93 Rhode Island Block Island: "Settlement" Means Fewer People!

94 Rhode Island Warren and Barrington: Fighting Over the "Good Indian"

95 Maine Bar Harbor: At Last — An Accurate Marker

Snowplow Revisionism

Getting into a Dialogue with the Landscape

Appendices

A Selecting the Sites

B Ten Questions to Ask at a Historic Site

C Twenty Candidates for "Toppling"

Index