Rest in piece, Mr. Howard Zinn

[Jaron]

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1957283,00.html

One of my favorite historians and professional role models gone. It is sad, but he had a long and decorated career. RiP.

[citizen k]

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1957283,00.html

One of my favorite historians and professional role models gone. It is sad, but he had a long and decorated career. RiP.

In that article, liberal historian, Arthur Schlesinger jr. calls him "a polemicist, not a historian."

The fact that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck as well as Oliver Stone love him is enough to make me go 

[jimmy olsen]

I'm sure he was a nice human being but his History was wretched.

RIP

[Hansmeister]

Another America-hating POS dropped dead.

[jimmy olsen]

Way to stay classy Hans.

[grumbler]

"A People's History" was brilliant.  While its bias was undisguised, it was eminantly readable and it addressed many worthwhile issues not approached by other histories.  Zinn never expected his work to be the last word in anything; he delighted in being the first word in something.

I agreed with virtually nothing he wrote, but I am thankful that he wrote.  He didn't think in bumper-sticker terms, like the polemicists of today (left and right).  He was an intellectual, which is why Hans was angered and confused by his work.

[PDH]

He was an intellectual, which is why Hans was angered and confused by his work.

Hans is so much like my freshmen students...

[BuddhaRhubarb]

:RIP:

[Hansmeister]

"A People's History" was brilliant.  While its bias was undisguised, it was eminantly readable and it addressed many worthwhile issues not approached by other histories.  Zinn never expected his work to be the last word in anything; he delighted in being the first word in something.

I agreed with virtually nothing he wrote, but I am thankful that he wrote.  He didn't think in bumper-sticker terms, like the polemicists of today (left and right).  He was an intellectual, which is why Hans was angered and confused by his work.

Intellectual. 

I guess being a brain-dead blame America leftist does count as being an intellectual nowadays, at least amongst the academia, which is why "intellectuals" are held in such low esteem nowadays.

[grumbler]

Intellectual. 

I guess being a brain-dead blame America leftist does count as being an intellectual nowadays, at least amongst the academia, which is why "intellectuals" are held in such low esteem nowadays.

Being thought braindead by the anti-intellectuals is the price one pays for being an intellectual.  No one expects you to know any better, though, so don't feel bad.

[PDH]

The real funny thing is that intellectuals I agree with are just normal folks summarizing the correct stuff really well.  The rest are just extremist hacks.

[Syt]

I prefer the works of Erich Zann myself.

[grumbler]

The real funny thing is that intellectuals I agree with are just normal folks summarizing the correct stuff really well.  The rest are just extremist hacks.

Well, a true intellectual likes to dick around with ideas, IMO.  Writing provocative books to try to stir up some debate over the "known truths" (like the "known truth" that the types like Rockefeller and Carnegie built this country, not the immigrants and the underclass) is a very intellectual thing to do, if you don't think that you are actually replacing old truths with new ones.  Zinn  would argue that it doesn't matter how skillful you are at summarizing the half of the truth you include in your summary; the exclusion of the other half makes the summary moot.

I think he would reject authors like Lowen who seek to replace known truths with new truths that are truer than truth.

[Sheilbh]

"A People's History" was brilliant.  While its bias was undisguised, it was eminantly readable and it addressed many worthwhile issues not approached by other histories.  Zinn never expected his work to be the last word in anything; he delighted in being the first word in something.

I agree.  And I don't think bias is necessarily a bad thing in a history.  A relative lack of it and an open-mindedness can be wonderful (I think Herodotus is the model in this regard) but I love histories that are very partisan against one or more of the peoples and periods they discuss (Gibbon springs to mind) and I also love ones that have a strong ideological or theoretical perspective (Foucault's fun and Hobsbawm's a genius).

All history has bias, it's really a question of whether it's well-written or not.  Zinn was a superb writer.

[Sheilbh]

I guess being a brain-dead blame America leftist does count as being an intellectual nowadays, at least amongst the academia, which is why "intellectuals" are held in such low esteem nowadays.

I think the intellectuals were right.  It's because knowledge is something for TV game shows.

And I don't have experience of the US education system but I really doubt it's stuffed full of left-wing radicals.  I saw a trailer for a conservative documentary 'exposing' academia and one of the outrageous things that was being forced on college students was the idea that 'gender' is cultural.  That's not radical, that's just a kid who didn't understand what he was talking about.