Book review: "Lies Across America" by James W. Lowewen

The cabin where Abraham Lincoln was supposedly born isn't genuine. The quotations on the walls of Jefferson Memorial aren't accurate. And the oft-described harsh winter that American troops endured at Valley Forge in 1775-76 really wasn't that bad. 

These are just a few of the startling facts described by James W. Loewen in his 1999 book "Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong."  

This compendium lists nearly 100 sites across the United States where, according to Loewen, the history presented to the public is wrong. It's not just a game of "Gotcha!" — he's trying to make a deeper point: Much of the way history is presented in this country is twisted, or even flipped, to fit political or religious agendas. The achievements of white European men are emphasized, their mistakes ignored, while the contributions of women, blacks, and Indians, are omitted or minimized.

Loewen is a thorough researcher, but "Lies Across America" is a poor title.  Most of the flaws he finds are not "lies" or even inaccuracies, but omissions or simple differences of interpretation. Throughout much of the book, he seems peeved that history is not presented exactly the way he would like it to be. Maybe it should have been called "Hidden American History" or similar.

Omissions can certainly be important, such as on the marker of the Mountain Meadows Massacre in Utah that fails to mention who committed the slaughter of 120 people traveling in a westward-bound caravan in 1857 (spoiler: It was Mormons, not Indians). Kudos to Loewen for this section's great title: "Bad Things Happen in the Passive Voice."

But in other spots Loewen seems to be reaching for things to get upset about. He calls out a small marker in Nebraska praising author Willa Cather for not saying that she was a lesbian — but c'mon, how common is it for a historical marker to note the sexual orientation of any figure?

He's peeved that Virginia has no historical markers honoring Abraham Lincoln and there are no plaques mentioning slavery in Richmond, Virginia, He chides Indiana for having "only" one plaque mentioning the Ku Klux Klan, even though he notes that there are only four such markers in the entire U.S. He's miffed that a marker in Nevada describing nuclear tests, while not inaccurate, doesn't include the information he would like it to have.

To be clear, the book has some great stories, He describes the bizarre history of how a fake cabin ended up at the Lincoln birthplace in Kentucky to represent the birthplace of our 16th president. He outlines how Thomas Jefferson's quotes are mangled on the walls of the Jefferson Memorial to the extent that the meaning is distorted. And he cites George Washington for fueling the false idea that American soldiers were "naked and starving" at Valley Forge.

He finds some fascinating lesser-known stories, too, such as the tale of how Alaska's Mt. McKinley got that name due to a squabble over whether the U.S. dollar should be on the gold standard. Two good chapters are from the Civil War, one detailing the life of Elizabeth Van Lew, a Union spy living in the Confederate capital during Civil War, the other a description of Abraham's Lincoln's walk through Richmond, Virginia, at the end of the conflict. 

Still, Loewen seems too eager to hear himself talk, repeating the same points about historical injustices too many times. The 50-page opening to the book could be about half that long.

Too often, he comes off as an irritating know-it-all scold. He seems like the kind of guy who would say, just as you're about to dig into some ice cream, "Do you know how much fat is in that?"

For all his historical knowledge, Loewen overreaches when he says, without the slightest qualifier, that President James Buchanan was homosexual. This was eye-opening to me; I'd never heard this. So I dug deeper and found that the scholars who know most about Buchanan's relationships (such as Thomas Balcerski, who wrote a whole book on this question) have concluded that he was not gay. This is just one mistake in a book full of footnoted facts, but it's enough to make the reader wonder what else here is untrue. 

"Lies Across America" could be a decent reference book to look at just before you visit a historical site. But I would not recommend reading it all at once, or you'll just end up irritated by the author rather than absorbing the history