/lit/ - Literature

>objective point of view
no such thing.

>>3965861
I specified what I meant by that. Stop being a jerk.

>>3965852
>I'd prefer an author with an objective point of view
No such thing. And you didn't specify.

Read Zinn's People's History, then read the works Zinn cites.

>>3965852
Zinn's People's History of the United States

>>3966035
>>3966043

Zinn was a Marxist wasn't he? How can he be objective? (or at least as objective as possible) And what if OP wants to read about the 'great men' rather than the working people?

>>3966051
obviously /lit/ would recommend you Zinn, it's how they operate.

I'm a history major, and my advice is to research the Historian before you read the book. Also, looking for "one book" on US history over 400 years (assuming you're not a 1775!!!! pleb) is absurd.

So yeah, look up the historian before you buy, so you know what you're getting.

>>3966051
Great Man theory was annihilated methodologically. He can still read conservative clap trap, but it is unlikely to be edifying from a methodological perspective. While Zinn's text as a survey work has massive and obvious limitations, it does introduce the reader to a major historiographical method: history from below. As a "counter reading" to secondary school nationalist textbooks, it also tends to create an abreaction in the reader, which is also useful.

Finally, there is no such thing as "objective." Zinn obeys historiographical methodological techniques and his work has survived multiple field reviews in specialist journals, attesting to its continued currency.

Zinn is "in." By the same rule, the conservative historians who do exist, in the minority, and write paens to the state within the methodological agreements of what history is are also "in." But don't read a fucking college textbook, read something of value like a monograph on change in party systems in the early 19th century.

>>3965870
no you didn't. but zinn isn't that patriotic so I guess he's 'objective'

>>3966080
Because your queer theory circle of historiography is "dominant" in some ephemeral sense of there being a glut of lackadaisical female grad students cataloguing the breath freshening habits of twelfth century Florentine basket weavers doesn't mean any theory has been "annihilated". The fact that you identify anything other than pissant leftist and social history with conservatism (whatever that means in this case) is telling. Go back to writing your histories of North American pawn shops and your critiques of hegemonic gendered discourses so no one can read them, and wait for the next seminal historiography to completely defy your stupid bourgeois postmodern academic paradigm.

>>3966072
as "a history major" why don't you recommend some books or add something helpful?

>>3966051
>Zinn was a Marxist wasn't he? How can he be objective?
This is practically oxymoronic. But it doesn't matter what he "is", his book tells accurate history of the US that doesn't bother with patriotism. This upsets people like >>3966072
>>3966102
but their criticism is always foaming at the mouth about "queers" ruining muh freedums.

>>3966080
>Great Man theory was annihilated methodologically
no it wasn't

>>3966102
dat butthurt whiteboi mad

>>3966117

>>3966102
>Because your queer theory circle of historiography

Queer theory developed in sociology and continental philosophy in the late 1970s. History from Below developed in the CPGB in the 1950s.

Thank you for demonstrating your gross ignorance, let us continue to ridicule you below:

>is "dominant" in some ephemeral sense of there being a glut of lackadaisical female grad students

Historiographical issues are normally solved by monographs and review articles over a 7 to 15 year period. Female Masters students have no impact on field dominant methodologies and epistemologies. Again, thanks for playing.

>cataloguing the breath freshening habits of twelfth century Florentine basket weavers

I've never read such a text, but if it dealt appropriately with feudal urban relations and their contexts then it would be significant. Also, as you'd know, feudal breath freshness involved diet and access to luxurious spices. Both basketweaving as a serious economic conduct and long distance spice trade had significant economic contexts and these would be highly visible in a documentary set that emerged from Florence. It would tell us about long distance trade in the Mediterranean, you have read Braudel I take it?

>doesn't mean any theory has been "annihilated".

No, it was _The Whig Interpretation of History_ that did that.

>The fact that you identify anything other than pissant leftist and social history with conservatism (whatever that means in this case) is telling.

I have a theory of history which provides a field adequate account of the contexts of my work; it also is sufficient to make a defendable assertion (see Thompson versus Althusser) on the retrograde nature of political or cultural history.

The fact that you're unaware of this again, means you don't have a horse in this race.

>Go back to writing your histories of North American pawn shops

I think that already appeared in Radical Amerika in the 1970s.

>and your critiques of hegemonic gendered discourses

Why on earth would I write about some pomo shit? In order to buttress capital? Fuck off mate, you don't know your left from your right.

>so no one can read them,

I'm actually quite happy with my work's penetration into communities of use.

>and wait for the next seminal historiography

It has been a long time since Thompson, and we're still waiting for a refutation of social history.

>to completely defy your stupid bourgeois postmodern academic paradigm.

A methodology can't do that as all ideology is bourgeois. Only the proletariat's praxis can, and will.

I can't suggest an entire history of the US book; however, Paul Revere is a good read, regarding the revolutionary war -- and dispelling of myths surrounding it and Revere, himself.

>>3966145
#wrekt that cracker

>>3966145
What is the point of going to this much effort if you're not going to actually respond pointedly to the meat of the post

You're just showing off random trivia and using sarcastic hyperbole as the platform for it, who cares? It's like responding to a joking criticism of continental philosophy with ACTUALLY DERRIDA WAS BLBLABHABLAHBALBAHBLABH WHILE BAUDRILLARD WAS.. Yeah, OK, but that wasn't the point.

Your post is just like your doctoral thesis. Guess how.

Alan Brinkley.

>>3966258
I addressed every point in your post and showed it wrong in fact and in reason.

>>3966051
>Marxism isn't objective
>What is dialectics

>>3966051
>objective history

>>3966102
Your trying to hard to sound intelligent.

>>3966793
>Marxism isn't objective
>What is dialectics

I want >>>/diamat/ to go.
Stalin, pls.

>>3966828
you don't have to be a Stalinist diamat-ician to recognize the importance of dialectics to Marxist thought, to its use as an expression of objective contradictions

cf. Adorno, Lefebvre, Zizek, Lukacs, Voloshinov

>>3966258
He addressed every point. You're just posturing.

>>3966828
>Conflating
:(
The ultraleftist will never like me :(((

>>3966836
oh, and Harvey (who is the most prominent and articluate of anglo-marxists to do so)

>>3966836
>>3966844
You don't have to be a Stalinist to be a drink the diamat koolaid, and you don't have to follow diamat if you're a Stalinist.

Historical Materialism only discloses the momentary and historical contradictions of existing human societies. It can't claim an objective or universal capacity, because that would be idealism. Like in Adorno. Lukacs' dialectics are, like Marx's own, historically contingent and thus to a certain degree "subjective" when compared to what the objective must circumscribe: the totality. We aren't Althusserian any more.

And to my Stalinist comrade: I've liked plenty of Stalinists in struggle—much like myself in struggle our shared praxis has exceeded any primitive ideology.

>>3966864
>It can't claim an objective or universal capacity, because that would be idealism. Like in Adorno.

yeah I'm absolutely with you there. Dialectics is the expression of the wrong state of things. Its hope is that of humanity free of antagonisms

>>3966882
that is - if you were suggesting Adorno's dialectics are idealistic, they're not - theyre' exactly historical and contingent expressions of objective contradictions, not the transcendental construction of reality

>>3966883
I was being a cheeky cunt by playing off the indeterminacy in your prior post with an indeterminacy of my own. I swear on me mum.

>>3967107
>playing off indeterminacy

wait a sec r u trying to deconstruct my text again

>>3966035
>>3966043
>Zinn was born to a Jewish immigrant family in Brooklyn
Every fucking time.
Can you recommend something without it being written as a part of kike agenda ?

OP doesn't want overly patriotic, but Zinn is overly critical. Best to read both Zinn and a standard history and compare.

Or try this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E9WU9TGrec&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtMwmepBjTSG593eG7ObzO7s

>>3968283
>overly critical
no such thing.

>>3967533
Even cats can't stand Derrida