Graber, Mary (2019). Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the fake history that turned a generation against America. Washington, DC: Regnery.
This is an excellent, useful, and necessary book. Too many Americans, at university and secondary school level, have been misled by Zinn’s People’s History of the United States. Even Zinn, in his preface, admits his is not good history, a judgment confirmed by every serious historian who has reviewed the book. It was given cache by the movie Good Will Hunting, and by similarly flawed books such as Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Taught Me. These books present a radical, Left, view of history, a Marxist, revisionist, and error-filled approach to American History. Zinn purports to tell history from the point of view of “oppressed” peoples: the Indians, the poor, workers, women, blacks. He is not concerned with getting the story right, so much as presenting what he considers the views of these groups.
Contrary to the assertions in Loewen and Zinn, we have had excellent American Histories, such as that of Commager and Morison (The Growth of the American Republic). Samuel Eliot Morison (Oxford History of the American People) was also an expert on Christopher Columbus, gaining one of his two Pulitzer Prizes for his 1941 Admiral of the Ocean Sea. Morison not only immersed himself in the primary sources, but—a real sailor—actually retraced the voyages of Columbus. Although the original Journals of Columbus have been lost, much of them was preserved by his son, and by Bartolome de las Casas (the famous Defender of the Indians), an admirer of Columbus, who had access to them. A careful reading of these primary and early sources present a very different Columbus, and very different American Indians, than those presented by the New Left “Historians,” Stanton Lynd, Howard Zinn, and Loewen. The Native Americans were not the “Noble Savages” of Rousseau, but warlike and slave-holding peoples. The New Left radical/revisionist historians began during the 1960s their all-too-successful effort to delegitimize America in the eyes of the teachers and students and, through them, with the wider culture. That misrepresentation is based upon misuse of history and sources, in many cases not merely wrong, but dishonest. Morison’s views on American History were later disputed, esp. by African Americans, and he made some revisions, but always followed the evidence. Morison was a prolific and much-honored historian, teaching at Oxford and Harvard, winner of every prize in sight.
The Taino (Arawak) Indians encountered by Columbus were warlike, engaged in constant warfare among each other, and in defense against marauding cannibalistic and enslaving Carib Indians. The Taino had themselves taken over the Caribbean Islands from predecessor Indians. Columbus on his First Voyage established the first European colony at Navidad on Hispaniola: all 39 were murdered by the Indians. Of course, later, Europeans encountered other Native Americas—the Aztecs in Mexico, the Inca in Peru, and many tribes, such as the Irroquois and Hurons, and the Apache and Comanche (Cf. Empire of the Summer Moon) in North America—who were warlike, imperialistic, and murderous: scalping, torture, rape, indiscriminate killing of men, women, and children (as set forth in the Declaration of Independence: “He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” The North American Indians regularly engaged in warfare with each other, and sought European allies in these conflicts, too often joining with the losing side (The French, the British, the Confederacy) and suffering the consequences.
Columbus lived in a world which took slavery for granted, especially of conquered peoples. Slavery was common in Europe, Africa, Asia, and in the New World, including among the Indians. The Pope and the Spanish Kings publicly declared that all peoples, including Indians, had souls, and should be treated fairly, and denounced slavery. Columbus ordered that his men treat the Indians fairly, and that they be converted, not forced.
There are many excellent favorable reviews of Graber’s book on Amazon, while the negatives-- those favorable to Zinn-- betray their bias by ad hominem attacks.
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Finally...Someone Crushes Howard Zinn and Exposes His Damaging Fraudulent Narrative
Zinn's zealous desire to cast a light on what he considered historic injustice turned into a crusade built on secondary sources of questionable provenance, omission of exculpatory evidence, leading questions and shaky connections between evidence and conclusions. This book exposes many of Zinn's flawed conclusions and is a damning response to much of the damage which Zinn's book has created, and continues to perpetuate, through our education system. Now, if this could only replace Zinn's original work, maybe a generation of students and historians could be freed from the false narrative currently gripping academia and many of the pseudo-intelligentsia in today's political circles.
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Reviewed in Australia on August 30, 2019