The Politics of History

I highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in graduate studies in the social sciences or for those already in academia. Those who share Zinn's political and/or activist leanings have much to gain from this book. Even if one does not agree with Howard Zinn's politics, then one still needs to be immersed in these views to best learn how to refute them.

Howard Zinn has the distinction of being both one of the most distinguished and provocative historians of the United States. His leftist philosophy permeates his writings and never fails to challenge his readers. "The Politics of History" is a superb collection of his earlier writings, originally published in 1970 but still persuasive in the twenty-first century. The twenty essays in the volume range from labor political history to historiography to issues of race/class/nationalism to freedom and responsibility. Throughout Zinn asserts a radical approach to history, one that "participate[s] a bit in the social combat of the time" (p. 3). He believes that the historian should be not just a reporter of the past but an advocate who interprets the past for the benefit of the present. He confessed, "My chief hope is to provoke more historical writing which is consciously activist on behalf of the kind of world which history has not yet disclosed, but perhaps hinted at" (p. 3). Zinn explicitly pursues historical studies what adhere to the accepted standards of scholarship that also encourages "a higher proportion of socially relevant, value-motivated, action-inducing historical work" (p. 2). He believes it is time that scholars earn their keep in the world, and the best way to do that is to cease to be neutral, instead agitating for change in the world. All of his studies, including those in this collection, do just that by telling the story of the underrepresented, the dispossessed, and the trod upon. His emphasis is on class struggle, bigotry and racial strife, inequality and feelings of superiority, injustice, and nationalistic fervor. I found especially useful Howard Zinn's statement in his essay in this volume on "LaGuardia and the Jazz Age": "There is an underside to every Age about which history does not often speak, because history is written from records left by the privileged. We learn about politics from the political leaders, about economics from the entrepreneurs, about slavery from the plantation owners, about the thinking of an age from its intellectual elite" (p. 102). His work represents an effort to move history in another direction. As he concluded in the essay, "Philosophers, Historians, and Causation," which also closes this volume: "So here is something for us to do: we can begin the withdrawal of allegiance from the state and its machines of war, from business and its ferocious drive for profit, from all states, all bullying authorities, all dogmas" (p. 368). Only in this way can historians begin to offer a new history of the world, and in the process, he hoped, become a cause of change. This is a provocative collection, one that should be read by all who want to explore the history of the United States. It is alternative history at its best. It is political commentary that is both powerful and inviting.

Howard Zinn is a teacher of social responsibility. This book breaks down American history into simple snapshots. He starts by examining who gains and who doesn't throughout history. The pattern is obvious. The government has had a long indifference to the poor. Zinn is a polished writer and a major force for good.

Zinn makes perhaps the best points in this book early on, in his first essay "Knowledge as a Form of Power." Here he quite correctly notes that academia in America (and this is equally valid elsewhere in the world) tends to produce mountains of "inconsequential studies" which do little to add to our general knowledge or understanding, much less provide a basis for future action. What makes this statement so damning is that Zinn first wrote it over 30 years ago, and it's still applies today. Most of the essays in this book are dedicated to arguing that history and other social sciences should be more socially active, and that its practitioners should not hide behind objectivity and neutrality but rather "put their knowledge to work." Zinn backs the latter point by noting that even in the `hard' sciences there is subjectivity, which is what formulating theories is all about. Even so, several times he warns against omission or doctoring facts to suit the needs of idealism or ideologically driven agendas - in this context, he wisely includes this truism by Mannheim: "while ideology is the tendency of those in power to falsify, utopianism is the tendency of those out of power to distort." Zinn's views on scholarship and the philosophy of history are illuminating, and his specific essays dealing with the Ludlow Massacre during a miners' strike in Colorado in 1913, Hiroshima or the Allied bombing of the French town coastal town of Royan even after Nazi withdrawal (in which Zinn himself participated as a bombardier in U.S. warplane) provide a great deal of otherwise hard-to-find information and commentary on these events.

Howard Zinn tackles the biases of historians in this important book. His thesis, which he explores with case after case, is that historians employ a double-standard with regard to covering history, basically serving a propagandistic role in our society, camouflaging the bad deeds of business and government, even as they claim to be objective and neutral outsiders.It's a similar argument that's made with the media, and no less important here. He argues persuasively (and thoroughly) for a radical approach to history, changing the role of historian to sideline cheerleader for the status quo to active participant in true social change.Because this book deals with a lot of history, it may be of limited interest to folks who aren't already into history, hence the four-star rating. But for anybody who does find history interesting, I strongly recommend it.