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Comment by mechanical_fish | Hacker News Reader

A readable introduction to the bits of US history that high-school textbooks delicately gloss over is Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me.

Includes not only an intro to labor history, but also to civil rights history, and American Indian war-of-extermination history, and of course the charming US imperial history of the 20th century. (Not that any other country's imperial history is much prettier.)

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"Lies My Teacher Told Me" is a good book if you don't have much time or if you don't have a decent background in US history. I think Zinn's "A People's History of the US" is a much better book for the HN reader who is interested in the subject and willing to sit down with a longer book.

I agree. I always keep my copy with me when I fly.

Zinn's book is worth reading, but shouldn't be your only source. E.g. it just skips over everything that couldn't be considered "A People's History", like pretty much all international politics; even if you like Zinn's (clearly-laid-out) biases just fine, it's rather incomplete as a general history book.

If you want to fill in some gaps, and want to ensure you don't end up as some kind of do-gooder, add Kissinger's Diplomacy. It's very interesting, and the ideas in it probably won't leave you wanted for war crimes in several first-world countries.

It seems that tptacek was specifically talking about history that would be considered "a people's history." The comment I was replying to was a recommendation about a book that fills in the gaps of US history textbooks. It seems like this subthread is concerned with US history, especially with the history of the actions/policies of the government+ruling class.

Did I miss something?

No, you didn't miss anything. I just felt the thread had drifted more than you appear to feel. ;-)

Joachim, I apologize for being snippy in my comment. It was late at night and I should have just gone to bed. Lets agree to disagree on the level of drift in the discussion and agree that I could have been much more civil in my reply.

No harm, no foul.

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