4 ms·

Your comment explains the hate. There is no such thing as history without a political philosophy. Herodotus had one, Thucydides had one and Zinn has one. Thi

Your comment explains the hate. There is no such thing as history without a political philosophy. Herodotus had one, Thucydides had one and Zinn has one. This is all fine and good. The issue is when people come along and say "He tells the truth, a truth not often told". It's not the truth. It's a contribution. In the medium-to-long run, parts of Zinn's writings will be accepted and other parts will be rejected. In fact, this has already happened. The problem is people selling Zinn as "the last word," as if we can all stop thinking about history now because Zinn finished the job. In reality, history is a never-ending process. Historical theses can be more right than others but none of them are "the truth".

andrewprock 6y ago
If anyone thinks that Zinn is not offering precisely a counterpoint to history as written by the victors, they have not understood his message. His memoir is literally titled: "You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train"
- UncleMeat 6y ago
  Sure. But there are gazillions of people who didn't even take a single history class in undergrad who clearly haven't understood his message and hold up his text as the last word when scholarship, even leftist scholarship, has added so much more in the intervening decades. Zinn gets more recognition than other scholars among laypeople, not experts. It becomes frustrating watching truly excellent scholarship go unnoticed.
  - andrewprock 6y ago
    That phenomenon is not in any way unique to Zinn. You can see parallel behavior across the political spectrums.
    - UncleMeat 6y ago
      Of course. And plenty of scholars also have things to say about Sapiens or whatever other hot popular scholarship is happening on a given day. Zinn's flaws are not unique and the fact that Zinn has overzealous fans is not unique. That still doesn't mean that scholarly criticism isn't valuable.
bvrstvr 6y ago
Your comment explains why one might dislike people who take Zinn's writings as the absolute truth but doesn't explain the hate for Zinn himself.
anigbrowl 6y ago
You're hanging an awful lot on one casual use of the word 'the' in the GP (although I agree with your general argument).
- abalaji 6y ago
  100% The above OP quite literally said, “>the< truth” immediately followed by “>a< truth not often told.” I find it baffling that the general HN/Reddit sentiment is anti-Zinn given the oft cited ideals of “contrarianism” that much of the community holds. That doesn’t mean take everything said a face value but rather assign some worth to a work that told the stories of people that were hidden from the usual, “winner writes the tales” style of history writing. I know, for me personally, Zinn’s work was a lot more engaging to read while balancing scholarly repute. This is certainly something from which other history books could learn.

andrewprock 6y ago

If anyone thinks that Zinn is not offering precisely a counterpoint to history as written by the victors, they have not understood his message. His memoir is literally titled: "You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train"

UncleMeat 6y ago
Sure. But there are gazillions of people who didn't even take a single history class in undergrad who clearly haven't understood his message and hold up his text as the last word when scholarship, even leftist scholarship, has added so much more in the intervening decades. Zinn gets more recognition than other scholars among laypeople, not experts. It becomes frustrating watching truly excellent scholarship go unnoticed.
- andrewprock 6y ago
  That phenomenon is not in any way unique to Zinn. You can see parallel behavior across the political spectrums.
  - UncleMeat 6y ago
    Of course. And plenty of scholars also have things to say about Sapiens or whatever other hot popular scholarship is happening on a given day. Zinn's flaws are not unique and the fact that Zinn has overzealous fans is not unique. That still doesn't mean that scholarly criticism isn't valuable.

bvrstvr 6y ago

Your comment explains why one might dislike people who take Zinn's writings as the absolute truth but doesn't explain the hate for Zinn himself.

anigbrowl 6y ago

You're hanging an awful lot on one casual use of the word 'the' in the GP (although I agree with your general argument).

abalaji 6y ago
100% The above OP quite literally said, “>the< truth” immediately followed by “>a< truth not often told.” I find it baffling that the general HN/Reddit sentiment is anti-Zinn given the oft cited ideals of “contrarianism” that much of the community holds. That doesn’t mean take everything said a face value but rather assign some worth to a work that told the stories of people that were hidden from the usual, “winner writes the tales” style of history writing. I know, for me personally, Zinn’s work was a lot more engaging to read while balancing scholarly repute. This is certainly something from which other history books could learn.