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by UncleMeat 2099 days ago
> factual errors

This is not the limit of criticism of history scholarship. Braudel's Civilization and Capitalism isn't considered dated because of factual errors but instead because it over-represents a particular narrative and analysis style that fails to paint a detailed picture of things.

History scholarship is absolutely not a list of facts. It is the construction of a narrative from source material. A text that is 100% truthful to fact can still be entirely bogus scholarship (I'm not saying that Zinn's is).
1 comments
jolux 2099 days ago
I will accuse Zinn of many things but not constructing a narrative from his facts is not one of them :)

I happen to disagree with a lot of his political opinions but I think it's very important that APHUS exists.

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UncleMeat 2099 days ago
Sure it is a relevant book, especially in leftist history work. The problem scholars have with it is that it is held up as the text by some laypeople. It is not unique in having narrative issues. That's true of all history. It is just frustrating to see people say "well, he didn't get any facts wrong so all criticism is invalid".
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jolux 2099 days ago
No, I would never say all criticism is invalid. I think it's a relevant and important text to read, along with criticism of it. Nothing should be taken in isolation, scholarship is ultimately a conversation at a high level between knowledgeable parties, and it's a pretty dated book in a lot of ways. Nonetheless it was extremely influential and solid as a basic leftist history text, and he even acknowledges its bias in the preface and title as I've mentioned. I don't by half think it's a perfect book and I have a lot of criticisms of Zinn.
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