Which is the superior history?

Which is the superior history?

Also, define what you mean by superior when you make your choice.

I closed Howard Zims book when he was pulling numbers of native americans out of his ass

>never forget the 300 million billion natives killed by le evil white man

They both suck, one is revisionist and the other one is reactionary.

to be fair the numbers from then are notoriously skewed on both sides depending on their bias
it really just says more about his general bias than it being something to get upset over

Zinn. His book has faults, mainly that it never really makes clear to the reader what awful practices were standard for the time period vs. uniquely bad in the United States and some lingering American exceptionalism (though inverted). However, he brought attention to the uglier parts of American history during a time when most pop history works on the subject were quite sugarcoated. He lays it on a little thick in the early chapters about the founding fathers, but given that popular histories of that era were (and often still are) de facto hagiographies it was a necessary overcorrection.

Revisionism and Reactionism aren't inherently "bad", "wrong", or "sucky"

but they are inherently problematic as they skew the facts for their agendas

I've only read Zinn's, but it really isn't great. It's really just babby's first "there are two sides to every story".

Revisionism and Reactionism aren't inherently "biased" towards politcal goals

They are problematic as they both represent rejection of any data not aligned with the specific viewpoints of the author. The bias is towards awful research, shit sources, and rejection of contradictory evidence.

>They are problematic as they both represent rejection of any data not aligned with the specific viewpoints of the author.

Revisionism and Reactionism don't inherently reject data not aligned with their thesis.

That's just bad history.

Anyone doing that is just an awful historian, not a true revisionist or reactionist.

they aren't inherently but do tend to overwhelmingly be so
the structure of both is problematic because it opens the door for that, hence why we see it used as such so often

lol i love this argument form
>the ones that do that aren't the real ones
nevermind that they all do that

>They all do that

But they clearly don't?

is that revisionist or reactionary?
in what way is it so?

Reactionary, pretty much a page for page response to "Guns of August"

I haven't read that one, but I've read other Max Hastings works and he's just baaaad.

Imagine if Timothy Snyder was even more up his ass and fucked chronology even harder to make "muh narrative".

well then fair ill have to give it a read
not having read it i cant remark on whether it falls into the problems of reactionary literature

They're both awful because they attempt to create a history of a still-existing nation.

It is impossible to create a good history of a nation that still exists.

>USA
>Nation

How would you describe it?

A country. A state. A union. But certainly not a nation.

Semantics

200 years of independent cultural development makes a nation in my book.

It's not really semantics, each of those terms has a different meaning, but over time, states have evolved that all 3 descriptions usually apply.

- state: an organized territory with a government

- nation: a collective of people with common heritage, usually cultural, geographical, and religious.

- country: an organized territory with it's own government at exercises sovereignty

You can have nations that don't have states (kurds, tibetans, tamil, etc).

You can have countries that are not really nations (USA, Yugoslavia, Belgium, etc)

You can have states that are not really countries (so called "puppet states" that do not exercise sovereignty.

Zinn. Larry Schweikart is on twitter right now meme-posting conspiracies about Robert Mueller and that Trump dindu nuthin. Zinn is guilty not being honest about presenting the truth instead of deliberately creating a counter-weight (which is how it should be read) to the other distorted history of his day. Schweikart is guilty of perpetuating the distorted and hubristic crimes of the people Zimm railed against in a modern take.

Well there are certainly nations within the USA though. Maybe it would be more proper to call it a state of many nations?

Correct.

Zinn's book is not the history of the US its meant to bring up the stories and struggles of people you probably never heard of in the states.

there's a term for that

Multinational state

While I still despise the book, how Zinn wrote it, and the way he presented the book, it does serve some purpose.

A patriot's history serves no purpose other than Schweikart being butthurt at Zinn.

I would assume both are notoriously biased.
I had to read Zinn's book for a class in college. absolute revisionist garbage.

>people in this thread giving Zinn a pass because “it was a needed counter, even if it’s not the truth”

A sin is a sin is a sin.

>Problematic
OK, John Green

What is the purpose of Zinn's above Schweikart?

Both were picking and choosing aspects of history to suit their preconceived arguments

What do you consider it if not full of problems?

Leftists arguments are always better thought out than right-wing arguments that are centered simply on "Muh Patriotism"

Both are worse. You're better off reading neither. You can't even get a "truth lies in the middle" by reading both side-by-side since the two of them are trash. They are, however, good for learning about historiography because they're so bald faced about their lying.

zinn is better; however he's not good. just less bad.

Yes they are

Zinn is fucking awful. He's so ardent in his Anti-Americanism that he'll use neo-nazi sources to point out America's sins. That's kinda beyond the pale.

Imagine having a brain so rotted by memes that the correct use of words triggers you.

>Imagine having a brain so rotted by memes that the correct use of words triggers you.

They're both fleshlights, they just differ in which side of the political spectrum they masturbate.

This is the worst analogy I’ve ever heard

This is what I read in high school

I'm sorry, you never had a chance at learning effective historiography, did you?

That doesn’t make it incorrect

...

>people's history of the united states
>only look at bad things that affected a tiny proportion of the people

Workers greatly outnumber the elites

it's an acceptable textbook

Evils can be necessary.

This. Also, if you go to an old book store and look at old textbooks it's amazing how white washed history is.

I found a 1960s Middle School level history book that made the Civil War look like an unfortunate accident and claimed northerners didn't understand slavery and that most slaves liked being enslaved.

Solid keks.

Now a days there are far more balanced histories.

>Now a days there are far more balanced histories.

And you think this solely of thanks to Zinn?

No. And I don't imply that.

Then why post your shitty blog about a textbook that doesn't exist in a thread about Zinn?