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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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 Posted: Fri Dec 05, 2008 6:50 pm Post subject: |
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| bacasper wrote: |
| Kuros wrote: |
| bacasper wrote: |
| read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. |
aka A Loser's History of the United States.
Zinn pretty much single-handedly killed my desire to study history in undergrad, so I guess I should be grateful to him.  |
Why does he have to be a "loser?" Does it take one to know one? |
I wasn't calling Zinn a loser. Have you read his book? Its a History of the United States from the perspective of the losers.
No, Zinn himself is a clear success. At least from the perspective of selling books. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Fri Dec 05, 2008 7:08 pm Post subject: |
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H. Zinn is New Left.
While once it was original to apply Marxism-Leninism to American history, now it has become clich�.
OP asked a question. And people are citing off-point books because they always resort to dogma when asked to discuss American history. |
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bangbayed
Joined: 01 Dec 2005
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Fri Dec 05, 2008 10:32 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| bacasper wrote: |
| Kuros wrote: |
| bacasper wrote: |
| read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. |
aka A Loser's History of the United States.
Zinn pretty much single-handedly killed my desire to study history in undergrad, so I guess I should be grateful to him. |
Why does he have to be a "loser?" Does it take one to know one? |
I wasn't calling Zinn a loser. Have you read his book? Its a History of the United States from the perspective of the losers.
No, Zinn himself is a clear success. At least from the perspective of selling books. |
I think Kuros is defining oppressed = losers. Doesn't invalidate Zinn. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Fri Dec 05, 2008 10:55 pm Post subject: |
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And I think it should be clarified that, by "losers", Kuros likely means "the people who lost", not the more current meaning of "pathetic jerks".
That said, there's nothing wrong with writing a history from the point of view of the losers, given that history is traditionally written, well, you know the old saying.
And I agree with Gopher that Marxist(not sure about the Leninist part) historians aren't as cutting-edge as they used to be. Doesn't make their perspective any less valid. I've never read Zinn, but if someone handedme a copy, I probably would. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2008 12:23 am Post subject: |
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Kuros's "losers" means those who were not "the winners," as in "history's winners and losers," etc. I doubt Kuros is moralizing here. Relax, Bangbayed and co.
| On the other hand wrote: |
| ...but if someone handed me a copy, I probably would. |
Merry Christmas.
| Quote: |
Howard Zinn is a historian, playwright, and social activist. He was a shipyard worker and Air Force bombardier before he went to college under the GI Bill and received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. He has taught at Spelman College and Boston University, and has been a visiting professor at the University of Paris and the University of Bologna. He has received the Thomas Merton Award, the Eugene V. Debs Award, the Upton Sinclair Award, and the Lannan Literary Award. He lives in Auburndale, Massachusetts.
Zinn was raised in a working-class family in Brooklyn, and flew bombing missions for the United States in World War II, an experience he now points to in shaping his opposition to war. In 1956, he became a professor at Spelman College in Atlanta, a school for black women, where he soon became involved in the Civil rights movement, which he participated in as an adviser to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and chronicled, in his book SNCC: The New Abolitionists. Zinn collaborated with historian Staughton Lynd and mentored a young student named Alice Walker. When he was fired in 1963 for insubordination related to his protest work, he moved to Boston University, where he became a leading critic of the Vietnam War.
He is perhaps best known for A People's History of the United States, which presents American history through the eyes of those he feels are outside of the political and economic establishment. |
HowardZinn.org
I imagine this thread will become a thread that celebrates and justifies antiAmerican thought, rather than one that treats the literature scholars have offered on the phenomenon itself.
Last edited by Gopher on Sat Dec 06, 2008 9:35 am; edited 1 time in total |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2008 6:12 am Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| bacasper wrote: |
| Kuros wrote: |
| bacasper wrote: |
| read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. |
aka A Loser's History of the United States.
Zinn pretty much single-handedly killed my desire to study history in undergrad, so I guess I should be grateful to him. |
Why does he have to be a "loser?" Does it take one to know one? |
I wasn't calling Zinn a loser. Have you read his book? Its a History of the United States from the perspective of the losers. |
OK, thanks for clarifying that.
| Gopher wrote: |
| OP asked a question. And people are citing off-point books because they always resort to dogma when asked to discuss American history. |
So you can read the OP's mind and know that he does NOT want works which may shed light on reasons for anti-Americanism? Wow. I've studied the mind for decades and still can't do that. |
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Hater Depot
Joined: 29 Mar 2005
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| Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2008 8:06 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher is right. I'm looking for authors who have studied anti-Americanism as a phenomenon, just as you might study any other. I've read Chomsky and Zinn and that is not what I am looking for. I'm not really interested, not here anyway, in whether it right or wrong to be anti-American. |
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ManintheMiddle
Joined: 20 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2008 4:50 pm Post subject: |
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Gopher clarified:
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| No. He was never antiCommunist. And no. I am not nor ever have been "virulently antiCommunist." |
This sounds like an inverse of testimony at the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings, so perhaps you're being ironic.
But I have no qualms, bangbayed, about stating emphatically that I am virulently anti-Communist. Indeed, Communism was the worst political ideology of the last century, responsible for the deaths and misery of more people than Nazism by a long shot. Communism is nothing more than fascism from the Left and if asswipes like Hugo Chavez and Robert Mugabe had their way, it would remain so.
Now stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
Bibbitybop bopped:
Forget the author, and it's more about anti-West, but it's called "Occidentalism."
The authors are Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit. Not to be confused with the earlier, more nuanced and narrowly focused work by Chen Xiaomei, who instead was actually critiquing Chinese views of the West.
bacasper wondered:
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| The book, which just sold its millionth copy recently, is somewhat of an anomaly in the publishing business in that it keeps selling more and more copies each year. |
So what, Casper the Ghost? Boo! Mein Kampf has also sold in the millions. Does that make it an intellectual classic? One of the reasons Zinn sells is that the predominantly leftist faculties in the universities and colleges have made it required reading for decades.
Kuros: I'll call him a loser because he's agenda driven. My problem with Zinn is that he writes about those who lost out almost exclusively, thereby failing to put events in a broader political perspective. In any period of history, economic development helps some more than others. As Orwell aptly noted, even the Communist leaders followed the edit that some "animals are more equal than others."
The OP reminded:
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| Gopher is right. I'm looking for authors who have studied anti-Americanism as a phenomenon, just as you might study any other. |
Of course he is; those who strayed from your request here suffer from Willful Reading Syndrome, or BLIND for short, which afflicts leftists in disproportionate numbers. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2008 5:24 pm Post subject: |
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| ManintheMiddle wrote: |
| One of the reasons [H.] Zinn sells is that the predominantly leftist faculties in the universities and colleges have made it required reading for decades... |
Bingo. Just peruse any university bookstore at the beginning of the semester to confirm this. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2008 6:34 pm Post subject: |
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Maninthemiddle muddled:
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bacasper wondered:
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| The book, which just sold its millionth copy recently, is somewhat of an anomaly in the publishing business in that it keeps selling more and more copies each year. |
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Thank you for considering my comment wonderful.
| Quote: |
| So what, Casper the Ghost? Boo! Mein Kampf has also sold in the millions. Does that make it an intellectual classic? One of the reasons Zinn sells is that the predominantly leftist faculties in the universities and colleges have made it required reading for decades. |
The sales comment was just an aside. But do you think all those intellectuals and scholars have nothing to contribute to the discourse?
Labels add little understanding unless well-defined. Is a "leftist" anyone to the left of the maninthemiddle?
(BTW, treatment is available for Narcissistic Personality Disorder.) |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2008 6:48 pm Post subject: |
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| How is playing the same record for decades "a contribution to the discourse?" Sounds like brainwashing to me... |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2008 7:43 pm Post subject: |
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| Does truth change over time? Sounds like historical relativism to me. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2008 7:48 pm Post subject: |
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Yes, H. Zinn, the New Left, and their followers, including N. Chomsky, certainly present their spin as "the truth," Bacasper.
I regret that you fail to see the pitfalls in such rigidity -- some, in fact, call it dogma. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2008 8:05 pm Post subject: |
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You want to get all hung up on semantics now.
Are you saying rightists don't believe they have "the truth?" Surely you are not saying that you believe "the lies," or are you? Absolutely everyone, right, left, black, white, historian, scientist, idiot, etc., thinks that what they believe is "the truth;" if not, they wouldn't believe it. What is the value of pointing out this tautology?
So there is no reason to be putting "the truth" in quotes. So can we just talk about the truth? Better yet, how about your favorite subject, history? |
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bangbayed
Joined: 01 Dec 2005
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Sat Dec 06, 2008 8:36 pm Post subject: |
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Gopher is putting "truth" in quotation marks because he's been in denial since the election. Just kidding, relax Gopher.
As for the OP, I'm not sure how you can read about anti-Americanism without reading about the causes of the phenomenon. But good luck with that. |
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