The Politics of History

Rating:
Summary: Zinn is a Historian Who Wants to Promote Positive Change
Review: Howard Zinn is a teacher of social responsibility. This book breaks down American history into simple snapshots. He starts by examining who gains and who doesn't throughout history. The pattern is obvious. The government has had a long indifference to the poor. Zinn is a polished writer and a major force for good.

Rating:
Summary: Zinn is a Historian Who Wants to Promote Positive Change
Review: Howard Zinn is a teacher of social responsibility. This book breaks down American history into simple snapshots. He starts by examining who gains and who doesn't throughout history. The pattern is obvious. The government has had a long indifference to the poor. Zinn is a polished writer and a major force for good.

Rating:
Summary: Political History
Review: Howard Zinn tackles the biases of historians in this important book. His thesis, which he explores with case after case, is that historians employ a double-standard with regard to covering history, basically serving a propagandistic role in our society, camouflaging the bad deeds of business and government, even as they claim to be objective and neutral outsiders.

It's a similar argument that's made with the media, and no less important here. He argues persuasively (and thoroughly) for a radical approach to history, changing the role of historian to sideline cheerleader for the status quo to active participant in true social change.

Because this book deals with a lot of history, it may be of limited interest to folks who aren't already into history, hence the four-star rating. But for anybody who does find history interesting, I strongly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Essays by activist historian
Review: Zinn makes perhaps the best points in this book early on, in his first essay "Knowledge as a Form of Power." Here he quite correctly notes that academia in America (and this is equally valid elsewhere in the world) tends to produce mountains of "inconsequential studies" which do little to add to our general knowledge or understanding, much less provide a basis for future action. What makes this statement so damning is that Zinn first wrote it over 30 years ago, and it's still applies today. Most of the essays in this book are dedicated to arguing that history and other social sciences should be more socially active, and that its practitioners should not hide behind objectivity and neutrality but rather "put their knowledge to work." Zinn backs the latter point by noting that even in the 'hard' sciences there is subjectivity, which is what formulating theories is all about. Even so, several times he warns against omission or doctoring facts to suit the needs of idealism or ideologically driven agendas - in this context, he wisely includes this truism by Mannheim: "while ideology is the tendency of those in power to falsify, utopianism is the tendency of those out of power to distort." Zinn's views on scholarship and the philosophy of history are illuminating, and his specific essays dealing with the Ludlow Massacre during a miners' strike in Colorado in 1913, Hiroshima or the Allied bombing of the French town coastal town of Royan even after Nazi withdrawal (in which Zinn himself participated as a bombardier in U.S. warplane) provide a great deal of otherwise hard-to-find information and commentary on these events.