Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I felt I needed to add my voice to these reviews since I may have some perspective not included in the several dozen I've read. The fact that this work continues to top best seller lists speaks not to the quality of the work itself, but instead to the pernicious way in which left wing, anti American professors have steadfastly forced unsuspecting students to buy it. I was a victim of this so many years ago. My professor was a confessed communist and like Zinn, admitted that he despised America. For a time, he helped me to hate my country too. I am not writing to give a point by point refutation of this attack on our country, although that is fairly easy to do. My main purpose is to remind the potential reader of the one most glaring problem of this book. If does what most haters of America, free markets and individual liberty do; omits context. When reading the history of any time period, one must remember what the rest of the world was like at that time. Of course it is true there was slavery in America and that many of the founders owned slaves. Although evil, it was common all over the world at the time. Africans, American Indians, Muslims and a host of other cultures openly traded and owned slaves. The unique thing about our founding document is that it gave a moral legal basis to the eventual eradication of that blight on humanity. This is but one thing that makes America great and unique in world history. But Zinn does not wish the young college student to think that way. And in fact, this writer, as a young college student fell into his trap. Just before his death I listened to an interview with Zinn on the radio. He was asked whether the world would be a better place if America had never existed. He answered without hesitation, "yes". This is the most widely read history book at American universities. Why our educators would force young students to read such an unbalanced book, a book hostile to the very values responsible for the greatest explosion of human freedom known in world history, is worthy of it's own study.