What is historian's opinion of People's History of the US? I read it recently and I was a huge fan but I read a lot of criticisms of the book so I was just wondering how much of it is trustworthy historically speaking.
Some of the opinions I read were just calling it "anti-american" and I found that to be a profound misreading of the book. But I'm sure there are substantive criticisms of it and I'm just wondering what those are. Thanks for the help!
Questions about this book are Frequently Asked, so there' a good discussion of it here
Zinn is not a fabricator- he's not making it up. His bias comes out in what he chooses to talk about, what questions he chooses to answer. And also, I think, in how he tends to have the powerful people being simply motivated by the wish to do evil. That has an appeal: it rallies the troops to the cause. But it does not make those people understandable, and understand is what historians are supposed to do.