Review by Booklist Review
Parenti, a self-styled "progressive" thinker, seems to be telling us that history is written by the winners. How original! This one-sided emotional screed repeatedly sets up straw men and then knocks them down. For example, Parenti asserts that the Catholic Church often propped up the oppressive status quo during the Middle Ages. Does any serious student of history need to be reminded of that generally accepted assertion? In his dogmatic insistence on finding a proslavery conspiracy behind the death of Zachary Taylor, Parenti crosses over from paranoia to absurdity. Yet, this is a book worth reading. For objective scholars, it provides a window to the workings of a mind hog-tied by ideology. The general reader may find that some of the less extreme speculations provide interesting food for thought. In any case, this book serves as a useful reminder that the paranoid style in politics is alive and well at both ends of the political spectrum. --Jay Freeman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Parenti (Democracy for the Few, etc.) argues that history is written by the victors, and he doesn't like it one bit. That's mostly because, as a progressive, his sympathies lie largely with history's losers. Historians, Parenti insists, have promoted gross miseducation across the board, abandoning "what really happened" in favor of a "pro-business, anti-labor" view of history. In his effort to "set things right," he turns, first, to the writings of historical textbooks, blaming "the powers that be"Ähistorians, publicists, publishers, Publishers Weekly, the culture at largeÄfor sustaining a "mainstream orthodoxy." Parenti then turns to Christianity's suppression of paganism, seen microscopically in Constantine's silencing of Porphyry, to conclude that, as with all hegemonies, Christian teaching and preaching is really just an "ideological justification for the worldly interests of a ruthless slaveholding class." The problem is that Parenti is a much better complainer than he is an explainer. He's at his best when he localizes his argument in a chapter that takes on the "strange death" of President Zachary Taylor. Only there is the mysterious process by which speculation transforms into official record given ample analysis. Parenti wants a people's history, not just another account of the "gentrification of history." Yet the actual story here is slanted, jumbledÄtailored to fit Parenti's all-too-familiar contentions, illustrated at times with bullet points. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A somewhat scattered but well-considered manifesto for a history that serves as a weapon 'in the age-old war for our intellectual emancipation.' A quarter of college seniors cannot come within 50 years of pinpointing Columbus's arrival in America; 40 percent cannot give the dates of the Civil War; most cannot distinguish WWI from WWII, except to guess that one preceded the other. Small wonder, says left-wing historian Parenti (Dirty Truths, 1996, etc.), for most written history is 'an ideologically safe commodity' that serves the interests of the ruling class'and that in any event is generally pretty uninteresting fare. At points in this collection of essays, Parenti examines the nature of American history textbooks, which, he believes, ignore or undervalue the contributions of ethnic minorities, women, and labor; considers the influence of Christianity on European culture, a tradition, he argues, that is replete with misogyny, anti-Semitism, and book-burning; and generally offers assessments of the nation's past that would give Lynne Cheney and William Bennett fits. Opponents of left-wing points of view will immediately dismiss Parenti's arguments as more liberal breast-beating; proponents of those points of view will likely admire this book, which suffers only from a tendency to repeat attention-getting slogans on matters of racism, sexism, and classism. Historically minded readers on the left and right alike will find Parenti's account of the 1991 exhumation of President Zachary Taylor'who, some scholars have suspected, was assassinated by poisoning'to be of much interest. Parenti takes issue with the conclusions of that long-after-the-fact inquest, writing that 'the chief medical examiner's investigation pretended to a precision and thoroughness it never attained,' while the media 'eagerly cloaked the inquest with an undeserved conclusiveness.' Solid if surely controversial stuff.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
