Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Zinn, Howard - Ralph Stone (review date September 1970)

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page
4. Tweet This

Ralph Stone (review date September 1970)

SOURCE: Stone, Ralph. “Humanistic History.” Progressive 34, no. 9 (September 1970): 49-50.

[In the following review of The Politics of History, Stone finds that Zinn provides valuable advice to historians on making their work more relevant to the contemporary political situation.]

Howard Zinn is a radical historian. The order is important, for Zinn's perception of the present consciously shapes his outlook on the past. He argues in this book that more historians should do the same. In other words, there should be more politics in history. If so, more people might read what historians are writing. Integrating their history and their politics would also help historians reduce some of that disjointedness they feel between their career and the rest of their lives. Zinn would hope that in the process much of the new history would be radical. But he would settle for conservative scholarship as...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Ralph Ellison (review date 8 November 1964)
   2. Allan R. Brockway (review date 25 November 1964)
   3. Martin B. Duberman (review date winter 1965)
   4. Margaret O'Brien (review date 5 February 1965)
   5. David P. Gauthier (review date November 1967)
   6. Carl Cohen (review date 2 December 1968)
   7. Simon Lazarus (review date 7 December 1968)
   8. Saville R. Davis (review date 16 January 1969)
   9. Courtney R. Sheldon (review date 30 July 1970)
   10. Ralph Stone (review date September 1970)
   11. Philip Green (review date December 1970)
   12. William L. O'Neill (review date June 1973)
   13. Peter Michelson (review date 28 July 1973)
   14. James T. Patterson (review date September 1973)
   15. Michael Kammen (review date 23 March 1980)
   16. Bruce Kuklick (review date 24 May 1980)
   17. Oscar Handlin (review date autumn 1980)
   18. Charles Glass (review date 24 October 1980)
   19. Erwin Knoll (review date February 1991)
   20. George Scialabba (review date 13 May 1991)
   21. Howard Zinn and Jack McEnany (interview date summer 1991)
   22. Michael Kazin (review date December 1991)
   23. Mark A. Graber (review date spring 1992)
   24. Paul Buhle (review date 21 November 1994)
   25. Matthew Rothschild (review date January 1995)
   26. Maurice Isserman (review date September 1995)
   27. Howard Zinn and David Barsamian (interview date July 1997)
   28. Harvey Wasserman (review date March 1998)
   29. Mariel Garza (review date July 1999)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright