Reassessing the "Second Worst History Book in Print"

The lead essay in this month's Reviews in American History is Robert Cohen's "The Second Worst History Book in Print?  Rethinking [Howard Zinn's] A People's History of the United States."  Let me start off by answering the questions that're probably front in your mind: what's the worst history book in print?  And who, btw, voted on this?  It's David Barton 's Jefferson Lies.  And the people who voted for this were readers at the history news network.  That is, it was an internet poll -- so take that for all it's worth, i.e., nothing.

But the poll does work as a nice set-up to a discussion of Zinn's book and what people see as wrong with it's relentless attack on the positive version of American history (as well as how it represented a refocus on the ways that our nation's grand history has all-too-often failed to live up to its promises, especially for the working class, women, and racial minorities.)  All in all a very enjoyable essay.

When I first scanned the table of contents I thought Cohen was talking about A Patriot's History of the United States, which is a book that I want to talk about at some point -- it's sort of a conservative counter-weight to Zinn's People's History.

I know, close readers of Reviews in American History are wondering when I'm going to post about another essay in the current issue, called "slaveowners and landowners."  I have to say the book it talks about,  Christopher Curtis' Jefferson's Freeholders, on changes in ideas about property, slavery, and law in Virginia from Revolution through Civil war, is well worth a read.

Comments

[anon]

Does HNN still lean right politically? That might explain the Zinn hate.

[Alfred Brophy]

I'm not sure, anon -- but I think the voters in that poll were leaning right.

[Bill Turnier]

Growing up in the heat of the civil rights movement, I always thought that Claude Bowers, The Tragic Era, was one of the most harmful history books written. It was published about 1928 and took a decidedly anti-reconstruction posture. Bowers painted those who fought for rights of freed slaves in a bad light. Perhaps his "worst offense" was that he wrote so very well and convincingly. I always wondered how many who fought integration with ferocity had read Bowers in their youth. It was left to a later generation of historians to refute Bowers and paint a more accurate picture of the post war era.