Audiobooks by James W. Loewen

How to Teach College: Inspiring Diverse Students in Challenging Times

"A posthumous book by the bestselling author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, sharing the strategies and secrets of an award-winning, fifty-year career as a college professor “Not a few professors teach solely because they have to, to hold a position that lets them do what they really want to do, which is ‘their work’—their research, their writing. … Those professors miss the joys of teaching.”—from the introduction to How to Teach College Widely known as the bestselling author of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, James W. Loewen, who passed away in 2021, was a leading sociologist of race relations and a prizewinning college educator. With a teaching career spanning over half a century at Tougaloo College, Harvard University, University of Vermont, and Catholic University, Loewen taught the way he wrote: with creativity, humor, and a high expectation that students can handle the truth. How to Teach College is an invaluable resource for professors teaching in increasingly fraught American classrooms. With a special emphasis on teaching students from diverse backgrounds and potentially controversial subjects, this posthumously published book comes to us in Loewen’s vibrant, original, and inimitable voice. In it, he offers advice from the epic (how to convey a love of one’s topic and motivate students to become lifelong learners) to the technical (how to design a syllabus, manage the classroom, testing and grading)—all drawing on firsthand anecdotes from his own courses on sociology and race relations. Edited by Loewen’s son, Nicholas Loewen, a longtime high school teacher, and sociology professor Michael Dawson, How to Teach College is sure to inspire generations of teachers to come. “How to Teach College is a 'cookbook' of over one hundred (I counted!) practical lessons, techniques, tricks, and gimmicks that Jim learned in his fifty-year career as a college teacher. It provides a clear road map that will make teaching easier, more effective, and more rewarding for students and professors alike. While it speaks directly to teachers, I hope that educational leaders at every level will read—and absorb—this brilliant, eminently sensible, and highly readable book.”—John Merrow, former PBS Education correspondent This audiobook contains a supplemental PDF."

James W. Loewen (Author), L.J. Ganser, Nick Loewen (Narrator)

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The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The 'Great Truth' about the 'Lost Cause'

"Most Americans hold basic misconceptions about the Confederacy, the Civil War, and the actions of subsequent neo-Confederates. For example, two thirds of Americans—including most history teachers—think the Confederate States seceded for 'states' rights.' This error persists because most have never read the key documents about the Confederacy. These documents have always been there. When South Carolina seceded, it published 'Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union.' The document actually opposes states' rights. Its authors argue that Northern states were ignoring the rights of slave owners as identified by Congress and in the Constitution. Similarly, Mississippi's 'Declaration of the Immediate Causes . . . ' says, 'Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world.' The 150th anniversary of secession and civil war provides a moment for all Americans to hear these documents, properly set in context by award-winning sociologist and historian James W. Loewen and coeditor, Edward H. Sebesta, to put in perspective the mythology of the Old South."

Edward H. Sebesta, James W. Loewen (Author), Paul Boehmer (Narrator)

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Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong / Twentieth Anniversary Edition

"A fully updated and revised edition of the book USA Today called “jim-dandy pop history,” by the bestselling, American Book Award–winning author From the author of the national bestseller Lies My Teacher Told Me, a completely updated—and more timely than ever—version of the myth-busting history book that focuses on the inaccuracies, myths, and lies on monuments, statues, national landmarks, and historical sites all across America. 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. This is a one-of-a-kind examination of historic sites all over the country where history is literally written on the landscape, including historical markers, monuments, historic houses, forts, and ships. New changes and updates include: • a town in Louisiana that was the site of a major but now-forgotten enslaved persons’ uprising • a totally revised tour of the memory and intentional forgetting of slavery and the Civil War in Richmond, Virginia • the hideout of a gang in Delaware that made money by kidnapping free blacks and selling them into slavery Entertaining and enlightening, Lies Across America also has a serious role to play in contemporary debates about white supremacy and Confederate memorials. “The most definitive and expansive work on the Lost Cause and the movement to whitewash history.”—Mitch Landrieu, mayor of New Orleans"

James W. Loewen (Author), L.J. Ganser (Narrator)

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Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism

"Professor emeritus at the University of Vermont, James W. Loewen has taught race relations for over 20 years. He won the National Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship for his New York Times bestseller, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. Sundown Towns is a thought-provoking survey of American towns with histories of racial exclusion. From 1999 to 2004, Professor Loewen investigated the records of thousands of towns to identify those that were all white on purpose—some of which remain so to this day. Loewen reveals that, though normally regarded as a Southern phenomenon, these so-called sundown towns were in fact abundant in the North. In unflinching detail, Loewen traces the rise of these towns across America, chronicling their violent histories. “James Loewen’s new book will bring shock, then indignation, then wonderment as to what we can do to justify calling ourselves a decent society.”—Howard Zinn, author"

James W. Loewen (Author), Norman Dietz (Narrator)

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