James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me is undeniably a thought provoking book. But I find that it can be long-winded, meandering, and worse: while it proclaims to despair the lack of critical thinking of America's students and teachers, it engages in an alarmingly small amount of critical exposition itself. It is vague about details and almost never cites its sources. If I wanted to learn anything more about a particular study that he cites, I'll have to look it up on my own, as he provides no bibliography. He does provide bibliographical information in his extensive notes section, but I think his erratic use of endnotes is not appropriate, especially in his case. For someone who wants to change the way history books are written, you'd think he could demonstrate some of the techniques he himself laments that history books don't use! Try footnotes as well as endnotes, and a bibliography that links to every statistic that he used. Also, just elaborating on who his experts are, the context of their words, would help.
But not only do I wish he had spent more time bracing his text, I also wish that he would have spent a little less time inserting himself into the book. His side notes, which I can only assume he means to be amusing, seem interfering and unscholarly. While disparaging a quote from Alabama law, instead of discussing the choice of diction, he inserts his own interpretation without so much as a footnote for explanation: "Alabama law used to require that schools avoid 'textbooks containing anything partisan, prejudicial, or inimical to the interest of the [white] people of the State'," (page 280, Touchstone 1996 version, brackets Loewen's). You see what I did there? I gave you the context and where to find it if you want to know more, and I left my personal take on it out of the original quote so as not to contaminate a historian's most important evidence: the primary source.
