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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 l
by 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 agoSure. 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 agoThat phenomenon is not in any way unique to Zinn. You can see parallel behavior across the political spectrums.
- UncleMeat 6y agoOf 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.