Author: Howard Zinn
Rating: 2/5 (read till page 171)
It’s exactly what the title says.
Spoilers ahead.
Well, not really, it’s a history book so we have a decent idea of what happens.
When I read non-fiction, I go with the expectation that I will be bored while reading. I know it’s unfair of me to say so, but a lot of non-fiction, especially stuff about history and science, is boring. At least, it’s not explained in an interesting way. Authors kind of get carried away in being super pedantic.
The Librarian told me to read this book and he gave it to me in December last year to read over the break. I had decided to finish one hundred pages a day so that I’d get through it in one week. Instead, I read about fifty pages one day. A week later, I read about ten pages. And so on, and so forth.
When I came back to Bangkok (I was in India then), I decided I’d read one chapter every week so that I’d be finished with it when school ended. But that didn’t work either.
Finally, I decided that life was too short for me to waste on a book I didn’t want to read. Also, my university counsellor talked to me about how he just stopped reading books if they weren’t interesting from page one so I decided to take his approach and DNF this book. I feel horribly guilty but that’s the way it is.
I really wanted to enjoy this book. The first chapter was REALLY good. The extracts were well chosen and the description of how Native Americans were taken advantage of and destroyed was heartbreaking. But I wanted my heart to be broken. I feel as though a lot of the world idolises the States without really understanding all the horrible stuff the country has done too. I’m not criticising here. Just pointing out that all good things come with bad things.
But after that first chapter, I felt like the majority of the text was just random extracts chosen to make a tiny point which I couldn’t for the sake of me catch. There was this one paragraph before the chapter about women in the States (Chapter 6) which I absolutely loved:
As many as half the people were not even considered by the Founding Fathers as among Bailyn’s “contending powers” in society. They were not mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, they were absent in the Constitution, they were invisible in the new political democracy. They were the women of early America.
Like, that foreshadowing is AMAZINGLY written. And the next chapter is called “The Intimately Oppressed.”
But the chapter was kind of a let-down. And the rest of the book (at least, what I read), more so.
I gave this book a 2/5 because I know that for a lot of people who didn’t have an education like mine (where we’re taught to be critical of everything we read including stuff from history), this book would have been a huge shock. I mean, imagine learning about all these horrible things about your country when you’ve been brainwashed to think good things about it. Also, I really loved that first chapter.
I watched an interview of Howard Zinn and I loved the way he carried himself and his opinions (even though I barely understood half of what he said). I admire him for writing such a controversial book about American history, attempting to make it as “true” as possible (though, of course, we have to be critical of this book too). But the book wasn’t for me.
I got bored.
Earnestly Eccentric 