Eddie X. Barragan Dr. Keith A. Erekson Paul Johnson or Howard Zinn?

History 1302: WHS/1865 December 9, 2011

According to the federal immigration authorities, besides passing language and civic tests, immigrants must now read a one-book length of history of the nation and its people in order to receive citizenship. The competition comes between the historians Paul Johnson and Howard Zinn, whose books, A History of the American People and A Peoples History of the United States, respectively, have become two of the most important choices. As an expert myself assigned to this task, Ive decided that immigrants should read the book of Paul Johnson, not due to biased opinion but because of a well thought reason why they should. I believe Howard Zinn has many great ideas, a really good point of view, and crude feeling, it becomes inappropriate as reading material. Though this is true, Johnsons point of view has a positive feeling towards the government; mentioning many sides of the spectrum, making it the best. First of all, when it comes to their perspectives, both Zinns and Johnsons are the exact opposite and nobody can argue that. This is due to the differences of how they were raised since their childhood. A brief history of both of these historians shows why these books are so unfamiliar in nature. Zinn himself, being a historian, author, left-wing activist, was son of a Jewish family. He was greatly influenced by Karl Marx which made him get involved in socialist/communist organizations; he couldve been seen as an anarchist. In each piece of history, it is noticeable that he tries to point out the flaws in Americas heroes. Even he himself mentions his book is a history of disrespectful of governments and respectful of peoples movements of resistancethat makes it a biased account, one that leans in a certain direction (Zinn, Pg. 631). As for Johnson, he is a historian, journalist, author, and speechwriter who became a member of the Labor Party and was also a left-wing politic in Britain. He had ultimately resigned from the Labor Party and started to compare to the Mussolinis Fascist party. He started

embracing new ideas from Margaret Thatcher (rhetorical convervatist) and became a right-wing ideologist. With these new ideas in mind, he created the known book and in it he believes quite the opposite of Zinn and starts off his book by saying The creation of the United States of America is the greatest of all human adventures (Johnson Pg. 1). This new conservative idealism created a desire for him to answer questions in his book, reading: 1). Can a nation rise above the injustices of its origins, and by its moral purpose and performance, atone for them? 2). In the process of nation-building, can ideals and altruismbe mixed successfully with acquisitiveness and ambition, without which no dynamic society can be built at all? and 3). The Americans originally aimedto be a model for the entire planet. Have they made good their audacious claims? (Johnson, Pg. 1). Background information from both of these authors help initiate and bond the question of whose book is more appropriate. Being appropropriate is the first step, the second is to have the proper information and use it as well. Zinn and Johnson use their historical sources in a very efficient way covering magazines, books, news, citizens, and even the government. Such sources are used widely in these books where quotes and excerpts are used to quote another person, magazine, article, conference, discussion, court case, riot, speech, or even commentaries in newspapers. Johnson mainly focuses on quoting these different sources and doesnt always get direct and whole excerpts from entire scripts or lines. This method of delivering information is much more understandable than putting a whole paragraph/s on quoting somebody/thing, this is what Zinn does exactly. As for Johnson, for example, on page 560 among many is about the largest an excerpt would get in his book when compared to Zinn, for example on page 543 a series of testimonies that actually take one whole page and a little extra on the book itself. Zinn may use a

lot of useful historical sources that actually support his point of view but ultimately too politically incorrect to introduce to entering immigrants. This is another important point of view, the idea that if we force immigrants to read text about leftist ideas and conspiracies behavior would only cause the immigrant set of mind to be against the United States. We wouldnt want to introduce contradictory ideas to the immigrant public right? These ideas would of course origin from the peoples history, as Zinn calls it the disrespectful view of the government. But what about the government people themselves? Arent they involved as well? Yes! But Zinn conveniently doesnt mention them; he makes the minorities, the rioters, and the protesters the majority. The evidence Zinn uses to support his claims arent always so convincing as well. Such example would be that of a Reagan paragraph that mentions in the years 1977 to 1989, the before-tax income of the richest 1% rose 77% [while] the poorest [had] a small decline. (Zinn, Pg. 581). A generation with Zinn concepts would become a terrorist generation, maybe an exaggeration, but a possibility. Johnson, on the other hand, attempts to create a more fluent and enjoyable flow in the book, highlighting several aspects of a situation. It can be seen in Johnsons story that the U.S. has good intentions which havent always succeeded compared to Zinns, where most have failed. When both of their stories are combined and compared, who becomes the most reliable for an immigrant to read? The answer is obviously Paul Johnsons book because he describes the majority which includes the wealthy and the poor, NOT the minority as Zinn does, which describe the poor, the rioters, and the revolutionists mainly. Though these different points of views show a better understanding of their reliability, the use of historical sources also become important to proving it is true. This in turn leads to another argument; Zinn has a more noncredible view on a specific subject while Johnson is more modest about the majority of subjects

and tries to implement several different views. While Zinn would describe the government as an evil institution driven by self-centered economic and power-related interests, Johnson admits the mistakes the U.S. has faced over the course of History, covering many sides of the spectrum. To become more specific now, Paul Johnson creatively and modestly, used the 5 Cs of historical analysis to describe our nations history. Many examples can be mentioned but in order to relate to the subject and show the use of the 5 Cs, the mass immigration subject will be discussed. First, change can be analyzed before and after immigrants came in during 1870 to 1912. These migrations occurred because the United States was expanding greatly in landscapes, wonders, and artifacts. This growth led authorities to expect further growth, they though big, and ahead (Johnson, Pg.513). The numbers prove that even before these years, the U.S. expanded in population; Civil War (31,443,321), End of Civil War (39,818,449), year 1880 (passed 50 million), year 1890 (62,847,714), year 1900 (over 75 million), and during WWI (passed 100 million) (Johnson,Pg. 513). As for immigration, the causality view is very obvious, as the mass immigration influenced other people and the whole country by these numbers. Such an example would be the increase in birth rates, infant mortality, and life expectancy percentages. As Johnson explains, the birth rates fell from 55 in1800 to 30.1 in 1900infant mortality rate[fell from] 217.4 in 1850 to 120.1 in 1900and life expectancy rose: from 38.9 in 1850 to 49.6 in 1900 (Johnson, Pg. 513). These all combined together produced a very high rate of population increase, causing mass-immigration. A focus can be developed when looking at these numbers and straying off might occur. During these years, many events transpired especially the Civil War and the First World War Knowing these facts help us understand why so many migrations occurred. A relationship must be first established, by noting where these immigrants came, there were Poles, Russian Jews, Ukrainians, Slovaks, Croatians, Slovenes,

Hungarians, Greeks, Rumanians, and Italians. This shows people from eastern and southern Europe migrated but why? Because the bountiful country, exploited and developed with ever growing intensity and skill as the [centuries] increased (Johnson, Pg. 514). Complexity is another important C as well, though not as much as the others. The complexity when it comes to immigration comes in the statement by Johnson, Never in human historyhas authority gone such lengths to helppeople become landowners (Johnson, Pg. 515). The government went to much trouble for this but in the end, the complexity, was that it was an economic trap. The final C, contingency, is Johnsons weakness I believe, because he doesnt describe many events, including this one, in a bad manner. He would explain the case of the immigration as a development of agricultural technology since many became farmers and thats it. As a way proving Johnson is the most appropriate author to use, it can be seen it would be best to use his book as a historical source to be read by immigrants; he doesnt describe many events in a negative manner, whereas, he believes the creation of the U.S. was a great adventure. In conclusion, one can see that when comparing both Paul Johnsons A History of the American people and Howard Zinns A Peoples History of the United States, many differences of perspective can be seen. The main arguments that can be made right away were first of all, Zinn creates a fragmentary and incomplete story to the United States, Johnson has more viable and convincing evidence than Zinns, and Zinns point of view is very unrealistic and simplified to be considered the United States history. The historical contents proved to be very useful when comparing these historians as well. Proven by the very same quotes Zinn uses, a comparison would show how Johnson surpasses him in being more conclusive. As per the last analysis, the 5 Cs of historical analysis help to piece the whole puzzle together. If it comes down to one single book, the best book according to my opinion is Paul Johnsons.