Please join us for a conversation with Ann Bausum, author of White Lies, a BookBrowse Top 20 book for 2025.
Please join me in welcoming Ann Bausum to our forum. Her critically acclaimed book, White Lies: How the South Lost the Civil War, Then Rewrote the History, was chosen by BookBrowse members as the best Young Adult read of the year.
Ann writes history for readers of all ages. Her books for young people help upper elementary, middle school, and high school students discover the drama and significance of stories from the past that may barely be presented in textbooks. In 2015 her adopted home state named her the year’s Notable Wisconsin Children’s Author. Two years later, the body of her work received national recognition with the Nonfiction Award of the Children’s Book Guild of Washington, D.C.
Please use this space to ask Ann questions about her work. As a reminder, to reply to an existing comment, click the grey Reply on the right side under the comment. To ask a new question, click the blue Reply button a little lower down.
Ann, thanks for being here! Please tell our group a little about yourself.
Thank you for this lovely welcome, Kim!
I appreciate being able to visit with this community and am humbled by the support members have given White Lies with the accolade of best Young Adult read of the year. Thank you! Authors live and breathe our works for years before we offer them to the world, never knowing how they’ll land. It’s always heartening when we find a match with readers.
Here’s a little bit about me. As you noted, my adopted home state is Wisconsin. I’ve lived in the Midwest most of my adult life, but my childhood anchored me firmly in the South. I was born in Tennessee and raised in Lexington, Virginia, a small college town in the Shenandoah Valley. My family moved there in the mid-1960s so my father could join the faculty of the Virginia Military Institute as a professor of European history. Growing up in Lexington turns out to be pivotal to the history I share in White Lies. I’ve published nineteen books since my writing career began in 2000, but in many ways White Lies has been the work of a lifetime.
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Hi Ann! Thanks for being here. I’m so impressed with your catalogue and I’m grateful to have the opportunity to talk to you about your works and your craft!
I’d like to start with your latest, White Lies, which hit the shelves this past summer. It talks about how the myth of the Lost Cause was developed and perpetuated, warping the historical record. What made you decide to tackle this subject at this point in time?
I call the Lost Cause the most successful American propaganda campaign you’ve probably never heard of but have almost certainly been influenced by. I sure was while growing up in Virginia during the 1960s. My textbooks distorted my understanding of American history to such an extent that I grew up believing a number of the lies I call out in my book.
My lived experience as an adult began to challenge those beliefs, and by 2017 I knew I needed to do a deep dive into the history of the Lost Cause. That was the year I met a former Virginia schoolteacher who told me about her experiences teaching one of the same textbooks I’d studied. I’d always assumed teachers had known better but been forced to pass along the lies. I asked her how it had felt, as an African American educator, to share this content. She seemed puzzled by my question then finally replied: “We thought it was all true.” Right then I knew I had to write this book. If everyone was being duped, even the educators, I had to know who had perpetrated this betrayal of trust, and why.
I began working on White Lies a few years later, after wrapping up other publishing commitments. When I started the work in 2000, I never dreamed it would prove as timely as it has, for once again efforts are underway to distort and corrupt our understanding of our nation’s history for political gain.
I have to admit my jaw dropped when I read about the African American educator believing the lie. I grew up in Cleveland and so I feel like my exposure wasn’t as complete, but your book made me realize I’d been indoctrinated, too. The section of the book that mentions Gone With the Wind really hit home. Like you, I was taken to the theater to see it in 1971 and completely bought into the ideas it portrayed.
Why do you suppose the myth of the Lost Cause just won’t die? It seems like there’s ample data out there to indicate it’s flat-out wrong.
Why do you suppose this issue has reared its ugly head again? I was so excited when Barack Obama won the presidency - I thought perhaps we were finally turning the page. And yet here we are, back again.
Do you think we’re in as much danger today of falling for the lie as citizens were in the past, or do you think technology and better documentation will save us from the same trap?
How did you go about researching White Lies? It seems so much of the history you discuss was deliberately buried, it must have taken intense effort to resurrect it.
… And what was the most shocking thing you discovered?
White Lies received multiple starred reviews and accolades. What kind of push-back have you gotten from those who still believe in the Lost Cause, if any?
That’s such a great question, Kim. What would it take to set the record straight, right?
One current tragedy is we were beginning to do just that. Many educators, parents, and students were demanding teaching materials that conveyed the full story of our nation’s history, warts and all. People whose ancestors had been enslaved sought an accurate portrayal of that lived experience. Members of Native American communities wanted to find their tribal stories in their schoolbooks. So did women, whose roles in history have so often been minimized, and the descendants of immigrants, and members of the queer community, allies of all of the above, and more. Our nation’s story is strengthened by this diversity. At least that’s what many of us believe, and that’s the way the nation’s story was increasingly being told, both in the classroom, at museums, in our parks, and beyond.
But lies are hard to stop. If you grew up believing some of the lies of the Lost Cause, and you’ve not had experiences that challenge them, it’s easy to feel threatened when your core beliefs are questioned. Change can be scary.
The Lost Cause arose from the devotion of the South’s ruling class to the concept of White supremacy. Perpetrators of the lies used race to divide people who might otherwise have united over their shared interests in economic security, education, and so on. Such divisions made it easier to maintain power then, and they still can today.
Add in a concerted effort to reverse some of the recent gains, such as an executive order calling for “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” and the lies gain fresh life.
I’d like to hope so, Kim, but we also know technology is being weaponized with misinformation.
The other challenge is our siloed information stream. It’s hard to fight lies when you’re basically preaching to the choir, not reaching across the divide. Books like mine may be able to help. I’ve shared this history in person in such places as Texas, Utah, and Louisiana, and I’m heartened by the conversations I’ve shared, even with people skeptical of my work.
I have Gone with the Wind shows the essence of the “Lost Cause.” Can you explain and so you agree with that statement?
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After reading through the questions, I did see gone with the wind mentioned, but I still didn’t get how the essence of the lost cause is in that book. Can you explain? I also would like to comment that I never heard of the lost cause before and since I’ve read about you and what the book is about, I now feel my education was missing a big chunk of history. I hope children are being taught this in schools today.
Indeed! Fortunately, historians have been documenting and debunking the Lost Cause for the last few decades. Over the course of two or more years, I read dozens of scholarly books and articles on the subject and took thousands of notes as I sought to understand it. I also tracked down primary source documents tied to people who had helped to popularize the Lost Cause after the Civil War. They hadn’t minced words. In many cases, I was able to quote these historical figures as evidence of their intent, which strengthened the factual authority of my text.
Quite a bit of Lost Cause history and debunking has been playing out in the media, too, even if it’s not labeled as Lost Cause. I read dozens (or even hundreds!) of articles, including those written by local journalists where the history had intersected with their communities. Not surprisingly, statues were a common theme of convergence.
I’ve been fascinated by Confederate commemoration since childhood. Lexington, where I grew up in Virginia, was packed with monuments and memorials honoring the defeated southern cause.
More recently, I’ve make a number of research trips through the South for various publishing projects, and I’ve paid increasing attention to Civil War memorials during my travels. While working on White Lies, I took an additional trip in 2021 to see key statues in Virginia that were targeted for removal. Some I’d never visited; others I hadn’t seen since childhood. It was very meaningful to view them with fresh eyes or, in some cases, to see the empty plinths and parks where they had stood.
Maybe how much money was spent putting up all that Confederate commemoration. It literally amounts to millions of dollars at today’s value.
That sum funded more than 800 monuments and statues, mostly in the South. Almost every county in the former Confederacy had at least one Confederate monument. These memorials were put up during the rise of Jim Crow rule with the express intent of building White solidarity and securing White rule in the South. The fact they commemorated the Civil War was the excuse; the goal was White supremacy. They were a form of propaganda.
Such a great question, Cheryl_T. I loved that movie when I saw it as a thirteen year old. The film led me to the book, and I loved that, too. The central love story is part of the appeal, of course. It’s the context around it that carries the taint of the Lost Cause.
I should define what is meant by the term Lost Cause. The Lost Cause is a phrase southern Whites used after the war, and may still, to evoke their nostalgia for a gauzy representation of life before the Civil War, a life that divided the world into those who enslaved others, those who were enslaved, and everyone else. That way of life was what the South fought to defend during the Civil War. The South’s defeat resulted in that Lost Cause.
White Lies calls out twenty lies celebrated by the Lost Cause. Among these are:
Slavery was a compassionate institution.
White men were models of chivalry during the antebellum era.
The Civil War wasn’t fought over slavery; it was all about states’ rights.
The enslaved remained faithful to their enslavers during wartime.
Reconstruction was a failure.
The Ku Klux Klan nobly protected Whites during Reconstruction.
The book and film Gone with the Wind portray all of these lies and more. Many Americans took this portrayal as historically accurate, which helped the lies spread. My mom grew up in the South and was a girl when the film came out n 1939. She remembered being let out of school so she and her classmates could view the movie. It was considered an educational experience.
We may not have all heard of the Lost Cause, but we’ve almost all been touched by it. Legacy media are increasingly calling it out, and educators are, too, when permitted. I share your hope that young people can be better instructed. That’s a big reason why I wrote White Lies, which is geared for readers of teenage and older.
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I was surprised that White Lies is listed as a YA title, since both the topic and your writing seem very appropriate for adult audiences. What went into the decision to market it for YA?
The book also has a really great Teacher’s Guide. Did you participate in creating that? Has White Lies made it into school classrooms?
Ann - Unfortunately you make a great point. It seems that today our government is on a path towards division rather than uniting people together. And yes, this executive order will probably be used to once again display monuments and add back material to textbooks to “cloud the history” once again and, as you say, allow “the lies to gain fresh life”. It is my hope that through your work along with grass roots efforts amongst everyday Americans, we can at the very least teach young people to not just go along with the crowd, but insist upon hearing multiple voices and looking for a deeper level of understanding of our past. It seems to me that your book, as a YA title, is aimed at an audience that so badly needs options outside the classroom to learn more. I am interested to know - do you actively change your approach to writing in order to reach/appeal to a YA crowd? I wonder because so much “YA writing” I find to be appropriate for all and not just for young people and always wondered what the author’s perspective is. Any expansion on this topic would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for doing this great Q&A.
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