A People's History of the United States

Two days ago I finished A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. I'm a little overwhelmed and I'm taking a little time to digest it. It's one of those books that I know I'm not done with. I'm sure I'll be diving into its bibliography soon and examining his sources. In a year, I will be ready to read it again.

I was going to write a review, but I have trouble rounding out an opinion on something I've read or watched once. I enjoyed the book. It was written in a way I believe all history books should be written, vibrantly and with spunk. Too often we are left with the dry blandness of textbooks which strive to preach nothing but the facts. But when you leave out entire groups of people, whether Native American's or women, you are in fact writing biased material.

Nothing is unbiased. There are always multiple ways to look at every subject. Grey area permeates our lives and our history. It's okay to pick sides if you can intelligently support your argument. We should be teaching our children to be free thinkers, not to follow blindly traditional schools of thought. Present two or more sides to history if you can. When discussing Hiroshama and Nagasaki, look at both the reasons why they did it and why they shouldn't have. I have my own well informed opinion, and so should everyone else.

We allow our students to be lazy in their research which is why we have adults claiming Obama is a Muslim and that the dead plan for universal healthcare would have lead to "death panels". People don't read any more. The thing that's preached to the masses the most is the thing which is retained and believed. Fox news doesn't want an America of thinkers, they want an America of sheep. If we all researched claims made by the likes of Glenn Beck, Fox would lose the vast majority of their viewers. See, I don't have an issue with differing points of opinion, I have an issue with lying in order to protect the 1% of our nation that owns 40% of our wealth.