No, not good for him and not not good for anyone forced to read his horrible, shitty attempt at a “history.”
That’s your opinion. A LOT of people don’t share it.
All righty then. How would you feel about making some space for the folks who might want to actually argue from their perspective, not just snark the thread up? Thanks.
I still find American Pageant to be solid and serviceable. I love Bailey’s ever-so-slight dry wit, and the editions with Kennedy add a nuanced economic focus which is often missing from American history surveys. This is my choice for building a good foundation. Obviously it doesn’t go into great detail on many important historical events, but it will give you a good sense of the areas that you enjoy and give you the tools you need to go get more information.
I also keep The Oxford History around, but use it more as a reference. It’s not as readable, and doesn’t seem to capture the flow of history, if you know what I mean. It’s like a long list of things that happened, and doesn’t always succeed in showing how those things came about relative to each other.
Actually I’m in Eighth Grade currently.
I reject your assertion that I am snarking in the thread. I could just as easily reverse it and say the same about you, if you wanted to go that route.
Huh, whaddaya know. Welcome to the boards, kid. 
If your books mention Haymarket and the Railroad Strike of 1877, they’re doing a lot better than the books I had senior year of high school. Glad to see some progress is being made.
I still stand by my recommendation of Zinn. Maybe you won’t end up agreeing with him, but the book is still very much worth reading.
Not really. Horrible book, not worth putting down so much as being flung with great force. It is not that it is slanted, for it is, but the slant it projects is… ah… irrelevant, inaccurate, and viewed mostly in retrospect. It is roughly the equivalent of a NeoCon history of the United States, except from the opposite side of things.
My textbooks covered Haymarket, and that was the early 90s. They also covered the Draft Riots. And Ford’s labor issues.
Can someone describe the Zinn book, for those who haven’t read it? Someone who is NOT Olentzero.
Well, the Wikipedia entry will give you a start:
I quite agree with the criticism. It wound up feeling cookie-cutter, without actual gravitas of history, simply a series of narratives about oppression through the ages. Viewed, not through the lens of history, but through the personal lens of Zinn, looking back at history, and picking out what he saw as high points.
I also agree that it is a necessary book, and possibly an important book, and that its existence has created more fair approaches to history in other texts. (Though possibly it is simply a marker of the moment, and the more fair approaches were coming.)
That said, it is a horrible, godawful choice for a history of the entire United States. It is a companion to a good American History, a solid alternate view. But not something to learn American History from, for it is missing entirely anything but the oppression it focuses on.
The Penguin History of the United States of America, by Hugh Brogan, is good. And he’s a Brit.
I have Zinn’s People’s History, but god, is it ever annoying. All white men are bad and can do no good, m’kay? All non-white men are good and can do no bad, m’kay?
Hmmm…
Is Zinn arguing that we should have let the Confederates split, without fighting so much? And that the war wasn’t fought to prevent that, but only to preserve capitalism?
It sounds more biased than even older textbooks.
Hey, pal, if you want that kind of shit fed into your brain, knock yourself out. Zinn’s shit is not only shit, but incomplete shit. That’s why I said that whoever reads it should have a solid foundation first—and that’s even if everything he writes is true. But if the other posters haven’t helped you, nor the critiques provided in Wikipedia, I’d say buy all of Zinn’s books and don’t take your nose out. What you’ll get is a very selective and biased version of reality. But like I said, knock yourself out. It’s your brain.
Basically, yeah. That’s kind of the theme of the entire thing. He starts out the whole thing describing how the founding fathers duped the populace of the colonies in to fighting a war to put them in to power instead of the British. One aristocracy for another, is how he put it, I think.
Agree with general criticism here - it is a plainly biased view and a real chore to read past the first hundred pages or so. It’s really more a narrative on all the bad things the white government has done to the minorities and the poor in the U.S. But, it does serve as another valuable perspective of the history of our country - if not in content, then in concept.
40 years ago in AP History we read The Growth of the American Republic by Samuel Eliot Morrison (first volume, up to the Civil War) and Henry Steele Commager, second volume. A bit out of date now, but first rate and so beautifully written (especially the Morrison volume) that I could hardly stop reading when I had reached the end of a day’s assignment.
Amazon has it for like $2.00. I suspect we read the 1965 edition. slobber
Uhh… pardon me, but what the fuck?
Gonna respond to this whether you care to read it or not.
No, this is not what Zinn is arguing. The copy I have on hand is the 1995 updated edition, which stops in the middle of the Clinton presidency, but I do not think the section I am about to quote will have been radically altered in later editions. On page 167, at the beginning of Chapter 9, Zinn writes:
I can see how you might be confused by the statement you read on Wikipedia, since it is very unclear on what it means by rebellions (Who’s rebelling? The Confederates? The slaves?) and that it seems to twist Zinn’s point around to imply an argument about the Civil War ending rebellions rather than Zinn’s actual argument about the potential for slave rebellions to end slavery. In any case, Zinn is not saying that the Civil War was fought to preserve capitalism, but that the vehicle of the war could be used to achieve the goal of emancipation and simultaneously forestall further challenges to the social order.
You got a bias, Olent. We love you, but you got a bias. Curtis has a bias, too, but it’s kind of a bit more on the whole 'nuke ‘em all’ side of things. If we could find a history book you’d both love, it’d probably qualify as the best book ever.
… but I wouldn’t count on finding it.
And you thought I hadn’t realized this?
Guinastasia, you don’t have to agree with my opinion or accept it. No skin off my nose. But to be singled out like that specifically because you don’t think you’re going to agree with my opinion is just fucking rude.