Which is the superior history of the united states?

I don't know, but it probably isn't in the OP image.

>>1808418
>Fuck America
>'Murica #1
As always, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

>>1808448
Zinn's book was not fuck America.

Both are trash

I guarantee you not a single person that will reply to this thread will have read both and provide you with an in depth analysis of why one is better than the other.

>>1808465

This is honestly the first time I've heard of either of these but yo fuck Howard Zinn.

>not reading Johnson's "History of the American People"

>>1808418

It could be that they are both 100% true, they just choose to emphasize different viewpoints. Howard Zinn chooses to write about American history from the point of view of "losers": slaves, union workers, socialists, anarchists, Indians, etc. I haven't read the other book yet.

>>1808418
They're both pretty shit, though I never actually read A Patriot's History, only read a few dozen excerpts.
People forget too often that history is about what happened, not about the morality of what happened.

>>1808449
Yeah, it was more so just contrarian.
>attacking the U.S.'s involvement in the two World Wars and then attacking MLK for not being the black panthers

>>1808449

Zinn's book was "fuck every part of America except for this small subculture I'm a part of"

>>1808528
>attacking the U.S.'s involvement in the two World Wars

Did he actually argue the world would be better off with the US's involvement in WWI and WWII?

>>1808545

>Did he actually argue the world would be better off with the US's involvement in WWI and WWII?

He talks a lot about draft resistors who refused to fight in the wars. Same thing for Vietnam. He also points out that while Nazi Germany was racist and bad, the US had more than its fair share of racism at the same time, especially with regards to how Japanese Americans were put in internment camps.

Keep in mind that Zinn fought in WW2 as a bombardier.

>>1808418

Histography is the sin corrupting History from within

>>1808449
The entire point of Zinn's book was that it was a giant polemic against the myth of America and the country's historiography. Zinn couldn't have given less of a shit about providing an accurate history because the book's purpose was only to make people consider a more socialist/critical theory approach to the United States both historically and going forward (hence his "you can't be neutral on a moving train" quote).

Basically fuck Zinn and fuck any teacher who presents it as required reading or anything like that. Not that the second half of OP's image would be any better but Zinn basically only uses small handfuls of evidence/secondary sources that fall in line with the view he wants to push forward, ignores anything that doesn't and produces a work of pure hackery in the process, something he was quite proud of since Zinn himself only has one historical paper published, never wrote for historical journals and in fact decried intellectual research as he was an activist first and foremost who believed that the research of history wasn't a goal itself but that history should be used solely to further political ends.

https://newrepublic.com/article/112574/howard-zinns-influential-mutilations-american-history

There's a pretty long and good take down of Zinn's style of '"""""history"""""" in particular and more broadly the anti-intellectual style of historical thinking that emerged from the New Left of the 1960s (of which Zinn was one of the biggest proponents).

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Not completely related but instead of creating a new thread i'll just ask here.

I'm from spain, so my knowledge about american history is spotty at best but i would like to learn more about it.
What book do you recommend about american history, specially the colonization part and up to the american revolution if possible? I've seen people recommend mayflower but it seems to only talk about a very small period of time.

I'm also probably going to buy 'historia verdadera de la conquista de nueva españa' (the true history of the conquest of new spain), any other recs?

>>1809723
The problem with American history is that it's hard to find something that remains relatively objective. For a long time, American history was written in service of creating the national myth. Then the New Left and people like Zinn came along and decided that needed to be dismantled by basically writing "AmeriKKKa" style screeds that focus on how shitty the country is which then leads to right-wing patriotic RAH RAH bullshit and on and on.

Empire of Liberty is a great read if you want to get into the early Republic as it covers everything from the creation of the Constitution up through the War of 1812. I've been meaning to pick up Crucible of War regarding the Seven Years' War though mainly seems to follow the North American theater (i.e. French and Indian War) and its resulting fallout in the lead up to the Revolution. There's also The Glorious Cause if you want the Revolution itself. The same author (co-authored with the recently deceased Andrew Cayton) is supposed to be doing a book for the Oxford History of the United States series detailing the century leading up the Revolution as well though no clue when it actually comes out.

>>1809402
Yeah but Zinn has a PhD and you don't therefore he's more credible.

>>1808483
How do you know about Howard Zinn but not A People's History?

>>1809822
Doctorates only add credibility if they're in the same field as your commentary.

>>1809822
He published one piece on La Guardia, then nothing else outside of his books. He was a superficial activist and anti-intellectual acting out his "fuck you, dad" tantrums towards America after performing bombing runs in World War II and getting fucked up from it.

>>1809847

He has a Ph.d in history, what more do you want?

People's History pretty much wins by default. Zinn cherry picks documents that agree with his narrative, but A Patriot's history blatantly misrepresents its sources.

>>1809857
Damn I guess I just got BTFO. I thought his PhD was in poli sci.

>>1809857
>>1809836
Appeal to authority. Zinns title is meaningless in and of itself, especially given that another authority of equal measure says he's shit.

His claims must be defended on their own merits.

better to read different books focusing on certain eras, like The Glory and the Dream

>>1808418
A PEOPLE'S HISTORY? LIKE A PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC? IS THAT A COMMIE BOOK, SON?
IF YOU'RE A REAL AMERICAN YOU'D READ THE PATRIOT'S HISTORY!

>>1808777
Lucky trips confirm

>>1809914

Both books do focus on certain areas.

Do you think the North American continent only started to exist after 1492?

Fucking white-centric prick

>>1809868

You've never read Patriot's, have you?

>>1809975
I expected no more from a murican

>>1808570
I think there is a vast difference in how we handled our internment camps versus nazi Germany's "internment camps".

1. Develop critical thinking skills
2. Read both
3. Use #1 to form an educated opinion
4. ?????
5. PROFIT!!!1!

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>>1808418
The "America Negrizzata" chapter to be specific.

>>1810044
Butthurt google detected.

>>1810520

Greater wrongs don't justify lesser wrongs

Holy fuck, only a white person would try to defend the internment of other American citizens on just their race.

>>1808418
read both and decide for yourself

don't take any advice from the pseudo intellectuals here

>>1809796
Samefag but I honestly think it would take a foreign historian with a more outside perspective and somewhat of an Ameriphile i.e. enough to be interested on the history of the United States (kind of like how Christopher Clark is for Germany) to write a more objective, less politicized or ideologically skewed history of the United States and/or certain time periods or regions.

>>1808541
This.

They are probably equal in terms of propaganda (Zinn in particular is frequently called out for embellishments and some straight out lies by academics). For me, this comes down to an issue of moral. Zinn is obviously fairly subversive in his conclusions, but it all depends on how you want to re-enforce your views. If you reject moral conclusions or pleas to emotions, I would say both are about the same on that scale.

>>1812369
I would say that it is equally true that only a white person would justify the treatment of German and Italian Americans who didn't fair much better, and apply morality only to the wrong doing of "others".

They would complain about the death of Syrians and Iraqi children, but never those of Dresden.

>>1812369
>Holy fuck, only a white person would try to defend the internment of other American citizens on just their race.


You do realize that the internment wasn't "just on their race", right? That Germans and Italians were also interned?

>>1808465
/thread

>>8609332
Haven't read Patriots, so I won't comment on it.

I have read People's History, though, and now the Zinn view of American history is much more commonly taught now than it used to be. The book's purpose was to be a counterpoint to the traditional great man, somewhat triumphalist view of American history that was taught in the 70s and 80s, so in that respect the book's current usefulness is more questionable. The reevaluation of teaching Christopher Columbus really took off in the beginning of the 90s, in part because of this book, the first edition of which was published sometime in the late 70s (76? 78?). I remember being taught in high school that Andrew Carnegie, Vanderbilt, JP Morgan, etc did some bad things, but that they also drove the expansion of the American economy; before, I guess, these guys were just taught in a hagiographic manner as "captains of industry."

As for quality, I thought it was a good read and provided an alternative point of view. Not sure if it was entirely accurate concerning some events, like the Mexican American War, but I'll just read other books to learn more about that.

However, the quality of the book, as a summary of American history, really declines with the end of WWII, including a throwaway discussion of the atomic bombing of Japan (probably too nuanced a topic to cover in that book, as the debate rages to this day both in the US and in Japan concerning the facts and the ethics) and summaries of the various protest movements of the 1960s and early 70s, which Zinn himself was personally involved in. The updates are fairly worthless too, the edition I read was from the mid 90s, so it summarized what Zinn called the Carter-Reagan-Bush consensus years, as well as Clinton's first term, which I could easily summarize as:

>America is for rich people and we don't have real democracy yet. Hopefully we get there someday!

>>1812661
I thought they only interned legitimate german and italian citizens, not Americans with german and italian heritage.

>>1809402
>The entire point of Zinn's book was that it was a giant polemic against the myth of America and the country's historiography. Zinn couldn't have given less of a shit about providing an accurate history because the book's purpose was only to make people consider a more socialist/critical theory approach to the United States both historically and going forward (

And? That's the point, the same with Lies my Teacher Told me, they basically exist to tell kids that what you are taught in school is basically bias right wing propaganda and these are other narratives that exist out there so don't buy what you are taught in school.

Of course it's not a indepth look into history as well, both books are pop-history, more in line with say Horrible Histories than anything.

Honestly, I wish we had Australian versions of these books. When I was in school in the 1990s, literally everything we were taught was "United Kingdom, fuck yeah, oh also Australia was the single most important army in WW1"

>>1814540
Replacing right wing bias with left wing bias is so much better?

>>1814546
Teaching kids critical analysis of history is far more important.

>>1814546
>replace
Supplement, dingus.

>>1814556
Agreed, which is why neither book should be taught in the classroom since there isn't even a "truth lies somewhere in the middle" lesson to be learned from reading them side by side, they're both just ideologically driven propaganda trash. Zinn doesn't even cite his fucking sources (not sure about the situation with Patriot's History so I can't comment on that one).

>>1814540
>And? That's the point, the same with Lies my Teacher Told me, they basically exist to tell kids that what you are taught in school is basically bias right wing propaganda and these are other narratives that exist out there so don't buy what you are taught in school.
The message that "no what you've learned is wrong, here's the real history you're not told to counter the myth" doesn't hold up when Zinn himself would regularly cherry pick his sources and ignore passages from them that contradicted the narrative he was pushing. To make points about African-American opposition to World War II, he used like three sources (one of them a fucking poetry book) and in one of them only used a handful of passages because there were other ones pro-World War II (and ignored the blacks who voluntarily went and serve).

Zinn is a hack who only cared about pushing his agenda and willfully lied, omitted or distorted the truth in order to do it. He's a fraud.

>>1814556
Zinn wasn't looking to teach a critical analysis of history (in fact he was very anti-intellectual; a total feels > reals guy) but to tear down the "myth" of American history in accordance to his left-wing beliefs.

>>1808448
Zinn's book is the exaltation of the American people and their resolve

>>1812661
Not en masse.

Interning children because of the nation of their grandparents' birth is absolutely unacceptable.

>>1808418
What about neither.

>>1816726
You do realize that the children had to go somewhere right?
Do you know how fucked it would be to rip a parent away from their child? They weren't putting the children specifically in internment camps, they had parents who were going.

>>1808545

No, his argument is that the reasons behind the US joining the wars were entirely self-serving and that we didn't give a single fuck about Europe and the Jews' problems.

Facts that all who browse here are probably aware of- but not ones that commonly get taught in schools.

>>1816719
It's not because the entire theme is "try as they might, they constantly lose to the big bad capitalists". It victimizes the "resilient" average person because his real point is that Amerikkka is a whore and fuck capitalism.

His book is very childish at its core. It's the Bill Hicks of history books.

CRIPPLE FIGHT!

>>1808418
Left is a legitimate work of history, although Zinn makes no effort to hide its slant

>>1817389
You're fucking retarded

http://articles.latimes.com/1997-03-11/news/mn-37002_1_manzanar-orphans

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manzanar_Children%27s_Village

>>1818337
Jokes on you, I just learned about Jap internment camps today fucko

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>>1818331
>Legitimate work of history
>Makes the USA look bad

Get ready kiddo.

>>1809723

>go to the website of your university
>click on "search library"
>type in "america" "history"
>find three or four monographs
>research the authors to find out their biases
>read the books and whenever you see something spotty, just check their source

this and only this is the correct way. if you're not a university student no problem. just use some universities online library search and download the books from libgen or order via abebooks.

don't fall for memesters and do not think that one single book can answer all the questions.

btw, you familiar with Heleno Sana? my favorite author on the issues of the Spanish civil war, still heavily biased. if you're conscious of the bias you can (to some degree) get over it.

>>1808418
>Left
Columbia University
>Right
University of California Santa Barbara Northwestern University

>>1814559
Wouldn't that be nice, but these #staywoke type of books usually just replace whatever gay 1950's text entirely, since most schools can't be assed to give you more than one book per subject.

>>1818657

>Appeal to authority

>>1808418
Neither

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one is a communist spook manual, the other is a nationalist spook manual

>>1818864
My run of the mill public school did both