spacestationtrustfund 's review for:

Une histoire populaire des États-Unis : de 1492 à nos jours by Howard Zinn

3.0

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I truly appreciate the effect this book has had, and Howard Zinn's intentions behind its creation. It's certainly a more nuanced portrayal of United States history (and its influence on global politics as a whole) than most USH textbooks, from what I've heard; however, I feel Zinn swung too hard in the opposite direction, so to speak. Eric Foner criticised Zinn's view of US history, saying that:

[...] history from the bottom up, though necessary as a corrective, is as limited in its own way as history from the top down.

Foner also elaborated:

Professor Zinn writes with an enthusiasm rarely encountered in the leaden prose of academic history, and his text is studded with telling quotations from labor leaders, war resisters and fugitive slaves. There are vivid descriptions of events that are usually ignored, such as the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and the brutal suppression of the Philippine independence movement at the turn of this century. Professor Zinn's chapter on Vietnam—bringing to life once again the free-fire zones, secret bombings, massacres and cover-ups—should be required reading for a new generation of students now facing conscription. Nonetheless, A People's History reflects a deeply pessimistic vision of the American experience ... Uprisings are either crushed, deflected or co-opted ... Why such movements so often fail to achieve their goals is never adequately explained ... The portrayal of these anonymous Americans, moreover, is strangely circumscribed. Blacks, Indians, women, and laborers appear either as rebels or as victims. Less dramatic but more typical lives—people struggling to survive with dignity in difficult circumstances—receive little attention. Nor does Professor Zinn stop to explore the ideologies that inspired the various uprisings he details.

What is instead necessary, Foner asserts, is "an integrated account incorporating Thomas Jefferson and his slaves, Andrew Jackson and the Indians, Woodrow Wilson and the Wobblies, in a continuous historical process, in which each group's experience is shaped in large measure by its relation to others."* While I do find this opinion rather reactionary (Foner said this in 1980, shortly after the book itself was published), I think Foner does have a point: the "model minority" is not actually better than the demonisation. Michael Kazin similarly notes limited understanding of historical actors in the context of the time in which they lived, although I would argue that Zinn included plenty of contemporary writings etc. to supplant the historical facts themselves—whether he failed to elaborate to an acceptable degree on the relevance of those artefacts is a different question.

Universally, the telling of history will never be objective, and bias is inherent in any study of any topic; the most for which a scholar could hope would be approaching bipartisan nuance. Zinn's work influenced the telling of US history in what was I believe an overall positive manner, regardless of whether or not he was 100% factual in his arguments.

*I quoted much of this directly from Wikipedia, primarily because the linked article is not publicly available free-of-charge.