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Howard Zinn people's history of America, I'm reading it at the moment, is there any alternative? (lemmy.world)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hello, I'm Italian and I'm reading what I understood to be a classic in American HIstory. I'm throug 100 pagesi in and I have the feeling that the author is a bit too partisan and unbalanced. Sometimes I feel that he had already decided what happened and then he tries to find facts that confirm his prejudices.
Hence, I'm asking if someone out there knows another book about the same subjecst that is not at all celebratory toward America, actually I'm looking for a book that is very critic and severe toward America, but at the same time that is more balanced. Any advice?

(Sorry if this message could sound confused or badly written, I'm not mother tongue and, also, the feeling toward the book is there but still blurry, but there's something about this book that doesn't convince me.)

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Well, you don’t have to get to “reality is a construct” with a history textbook. No textbooks can include the entire past. History is made at a constant rate and you have to learn it faster than it is made. So history textbooks by definition have to omit some things, and bias can always creep in when you choose which things to include or omit.

That said, it’s really important that Americans read Howard Zinn. We still have people who don’t have a proper understanding of why the Civil War was fought. Or the Revolutionary War. Or the Iraq War.