American history

It's hard to find an honest book about American history. There's a certain narrative that is "safe" and some heroes that are still on pedestal in mainstream publication despite being exposed long ago. It's like a war and you have to choose sides and really frustrating when you find old myths in overall good books.

At the very least it's important to know what are the main disagreements and controversial topics. Mainly Civil War, progressive era, FDR and New Deal, and everything since 1960s. Documentaries won't help.

biased towards...?

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It's predominantly liberal revisionist talking points, with some Marxist school sprinkled in, all saddled into one book for a GOTCHA! factor. Patriot's is conservative realist compiled as a rebuttal. They're both awful books that are recommended by people who either have no actual background in history or use it as a juxtaposition against other broad secondary sources. This goes for all People's History books btw, not just People's History of the United States. Take everything said in them with a dash of salt, a shot of tequila and a better book for context.

Also I should mention that this is not just my opinion. This is the common academic consensus on the People's History books.

Thanks. I've been reading this lately and am enjoying it quite a bit. It's obviously not helpful for all aspects of American history, but it's been helpful for understanding the intellectual history.

If you're actually interested in historiography, pick up In Defense of History by Richard Evans. Should be required reading for all Veeky Forums freshmen imo.

The Atlantic seems to agree theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/07/lies-the-debunkers-told-me-how-bad-history-books-win-us-over/260251/

>Documentaries
I don't think you "Get it." Certain schools (I know Yale did it bc was happening when I was there as a UG) tape some of their history and other courses and put them on YT. Depending on who professor is, it might get some people interested and pique their interest. Or, spending on professor, it might not.

example-- the professor at Yale who teaches into Euro history, Merriman, is an outright communist. Not sure if he's part of the history course series, but if he is, unless he really want out of his way to hide his beliefs, people would be able to see that a very open communist is teaching history at Yale.

Yeah, Zinn's book has been shit on for a long time. I have no idea why it get's recommended so often (actually I do know, but it's really too long for Veeky Forums). My first undergrad U.S. history prof (retired after my freshman year) would practically start frothing at the mouth if someone brought up Zinn's book.

OP here, this is just for my own interest. I'm French and we learn US history in school here (at least the history we have in common), so I'm not totally ignorant about it. I'll like to start with colonial history in order to fully understand the Revolutionary war I think.

Anyway, thanks for the help Anons.

Thanks for the rec. Does Veeky Forums have a reading list or top 100? I study philosophy, but am starting to get more interested in history.

>Does Veeky Forums have a reading list or top 100?
No and I am that one autistic user that will continually rail against it. We have book recc threads every so often.

Some tips that I've tried to have added to the sticky for ages:
>Don't hesitate to email history professors at small universities, they'll usually get back to you pretty fast and are almost always willing to recommend things.
>Check the bibliography of the books you read, you can find neato secondary sources on things you're interested in that way, or even primary sources online
>Google Scholar is your friend. Seriously. That shit saved my ass in uni and my undergrad thesis would have been 1000x more difficult without it. Type in a subject, any subject, and you'll get a litany of books and journal articles about it. You can even get super specific.
>Fair warning, a lot of the niche history books can get pretty expensive ($80+), common subjects are much cheaper. However, the (sub $200) books are generally worth their price, imo.

The "Politically Incorrect guide" series is similar. Obviously biased just like those already mentioned. The difference is that pro-conservative bias isn't as mainstream as liberal one.
At least the one about presidents (from Wilson to Obama) which is the only one I've read is good for sources, some of them being liberal. Obviously a book with that title is openly confrontational but I like it because it's a nice and accurate compressed compilation of facts about people like Harding, Wilson or FDR.

A conscious reader can read books leaning one way or the other of course.

Honestly, I'm a neo-rankean so I have little patience with obvious bias in books. Post-Modernism has gone way too far by normalizing it, desu.

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Don't read this shit either.

t.

Op said unbiased.

Oxford can be kind of liberally biased: What Hath God Wrought? for instance is both good but the author really, really hates Andrew Jackson and thinks the Whigs were the true heroes of American history. Likewise there's a Reconstruction/Gilded Age book coming up by a guy who previously wrote a book about Gilded Age railroads that came down to "RAILROAD COMPANIES WERE EVIL" which doesn't sound like it'll make for a good time.

OTOH The Glorious Cause is pretty good if you like the Revolutionary era and Empire of Liberty is absolutely necessary reading for the early Republic even with the author's Jefferson/Republican bias.

One thing I've noticed is that American history, moreso than history of other countries (although it might be different in books published in the native language) is incredibly political. It's impossible to find, say, anything about westward expansion that isn't just "the poor natives, victims of the evil white man's perfidy".

Zinn is a hack who only ever published one paper and was purposefully dismissive of parts of his sources that disagreed with his opinions. He very much believed that history can and should be distorted for political ends because that's what the "America as legend" style of history does to and his mindset has spent 40 years infesting American history education and the way American history is written.

The thing about American historiography is that it has it's roots in British historiography rather than German historiography. British historiography is far more biased than American historiography, but they cover it better with more flowery language. German historiography (for the most part) is less biased as it uses the sources to tell the story rather than the other way around.

Also, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" by Frederick Turner is basically required reading and influenced essentially all American history that came after it.

Teddy Roosevelt's The Naval War of 1812 is surprising unbiased, Teddy gives an entire forward about it, and calls out previous historians biases.