"A winner by any criteria: informative, stimulating, and challenging. Loewen's wry wit is a welcome bonus." Edwin C. Bearss, former Chief Historian, National Park Service
"Loewen is a one-man historical truth squad....He has written a devastating portrait of how American history is commemorated." Eric Foner, The Nation
ContentsIn 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