SOURCE: Green, Philip. Review of The Politics of History, by Howard Zinn. American Political Science Review 64, no. 4 (December 1970): 1281-83.

In the following review, Green discusses Zinn's rejection of the possibility of achieving objectivity in historical writing.

The purpose of Howard Zinn's excellent collection of essays on history and historiography is to draw attention by both analysis and precept to “the consequences in action of historical writing. The meaning … of a writer will be found not just in what he intends to say, or what he does literally say, but in the effect of his writing on living beings.” (p. 279) “The Politics of History,” then, is a literal title, referring not to political events in time past but to the current activities as historians (and social scientists) themselves, Zinn's own included. For in a world, as he puts it, “where children are still not safe from starvation or bombs...