And those were the good old days?

On my bedside table at the moment is Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States : 1492-Present. It was recommended to me about a year ago but it took a trip to a book signing before this book fell into my hands. You see I made the mistake of turning up at a book signing (for another book) with my own copy of the book and see the eyes of the book store people on me as I left I felt a guilt paign and decided I should be some other book. Howard Zinn's work was the only one that stood out as being something I really wanted to read.

Those who have read "A People's History" could probably guess how I'm feeling right now, especially from the title of this entry. Those who have not read it should pick up a copy and dive in, its quite a page turner. Of course Zinn doesn't proclaim to offer a "balanced" view of history in his book, as many have pointed out, history is written by the winners. So Zinn has shamelessly written from the perspective of the losers throughout history - the people. Hence the title. So when others choose to celebrate Columbus and extol his great navigational skills (a mere 33 days at sea - significantly less spectacular than the pacific navigators who colonized the Polynesian islands), Zinn choose to extol his consumate skill for genocide. Yes, it is well documented that Columbus was the first to wipe of the native people of the Bahamas and what is now called Cuba. Hundreds of thousands, if not a million or more were simply exterminated in cruel and horrific circumstances.

And so it goes on. As late as the mid-1700s people were legally being "burned alive over a slow fire" for trying to escape their slave masters. The peoples history told in this book is clearly one that gives the picture from the short and pointy end of the stick otherwise known as "progress" or "civilization". I'm only a few chapters into it so far but I can tell things wont be getting any better between Columbus' first genocidal forays into the West Indies, and the contemporary events of George W. Bush's "war on terrorism". So next time someone tells you "those were the good old days" you should ask them, or yourself, just whose perspective that sentiment is coming from.