British North Amerca Settling

Stevi Day

Dickson

AP US History

20 August 2007

Strengths and Weaknesses of Dr. Zinn

All writing has strengths and weaknesses. Howard Zinn wrote a chapter in A People's History of the United States of America and he too has some very strong points to his writing along with some weak points.

Some strengths in Dr. Zinn's writing is that he is very realistic. He talks about what really happened even though it is disturbing. The disturbing ness of his writing is what makes it so interesting, especially because we do not hear about it that often. When we think of Columbus Day, most think of happy sailors that came across America on their way to Asia in their three ships. We do not hear about the how the "sailors" treated the original Indians that lived hear before us or what Columbus actually wanted, which was gold.

Another strength that Dr. Zinn had was that he used lots of statistics which made his story really believable. The only problem is that none of these statistics were cited. There is a bibliography at the end, but he never cited his work within the text. This makes everything that he said questionable. When I read this chapter, all I was thinking about was where did he get all of this information, and why have I never heard of this before? Having citations in his text would have made me feel like he actually was telling the truth.

Another reason why citations would have made me believe his writing more was because his statistics were really strong. He says, "There were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1495 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines." Three million people, that is really hard for me to believe. That would mean that all of the Indians were wiped out, Las Casas (he was an eyewitness to what Columbus and his fleet did to the Indians) even says himself, "Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it..."

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