History Buffs Name David Barton’s Latest History Book As The Worst In History

Participants on the online forum History News Network have rated wingnut liar David Barton’s book on Thomas Jefferson to be the “least credible history book in print.”

After a week of voting by readers, David Barton’s “The Jefferson Lies” won with some 650 votes, narrowly edging the left-wing historian Howard Zinn’s “People’s History of the United States,” which received 641 votes. Trailing far behind were Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard’s “Killing Lincoln” (which argues that Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton was complicit in Lincoln’s assassination); Thomas DiLorenzo’s “The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War”; and Gavin Menzies’s “1421: The Year China Discovered America.” To many voters the badness of “The Jefferson Lies” — which argues, among other things, that Jefferson in fact saw no need for a wall of separation between church and state — was a truth held to be self-evident. In expert commentary solicited by the network, which is hosted by George Mason University, Warren Throckmorton and Michael Coulter, the authors of “Getting Jefferson Right,” denounced Mr. Barton’s “distortions,” writing, “As Jefferson did with the Gospels, Barton chooses what he likes about Jefferson and leaves out the rest to create a result more in line with his ideology.”

Stand by for Barton’s claim that he actually won “best history book.” Because the Bible clearly says so.