Product Description

Essays on how history's victors distort and suppress the documentary record in order to perpetuate their power and privilege, and how historians are influenced by the professional and class environment in which they work.

"Michael Parenti, always provocative and eloquent, gives us a lively as well as valuable critique of orthodoxy posing as 'history.'"-Howard Zinn

"Solid if surely controversial stuff."-Kirkus

Table of Contents

Prologue: Against the Mainstream
History as Miseducation
Mainstream Orthodoxy
The Hunt for Real History
Textbooks: America the Beautiful
For Business, Against Labor
The School as a Tool
Priests and Pagans, Saints and Slaves
Triumph of the One True Faith
Silencing the Pagans
Accepting the Powers that Be
Affluent Believers
Saints For Slavery
Bishops and Barbarians, Jezebels and Jews
The Myth of the Devout Peasant
The Curse of Eve
The Burning of Books
Preparing the Holocaust
History in the Faking
Suppression at the Point of Origin
Cold War in the Archives
Classified History, USA
Listening to the Muted Masses
In Ranke's Footsteps
His Majesty's Servant
An ``Aristocratic Profession''
Purging the Reds
Publishing and ``Privishing''
Marketing the Right Stuff
The Strange Death of President Zachary
Taylor, a Study in the Manufacture of
Mainstream History
Examining the Examination
Confrontation with the Slavocracy
A lethal Dose of Cherries and Milk?
Honorable Men and Official History
Against Psychopolitics
Depoliticizing the Political
Dubious Clinical Data
Lenin as Oedipus
The Compulsive Hoover
The Political Hoover
When the Political Becomes Personal
Afterword

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #438229 in Books
• Published on: 2001-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Parenti (Democracy for the Few, etc.) argues that history is written by the victors, and he doesn't like it one bit. That's mostly because, as a progressive, his sympathies lie largely with history's losers. Historians, Parenti insists, have promoted gross miseducation across the board, abandoning "what really happened" in favor of a "pro-business, anti-labor" view of history. In his effort to "set things right," he turns, first, to the writings of historical textbooks, blaming "the powers that be"Ahistorians, publicists, publishers, Publishers Weekly, the culture at largeAfor sustaining a "mainstream orthodoxy." Parenti then turns to Christianity's suppression of paganism, seen microscopically in Constantine's silencing of Porphyry, to conclude that, as with all hegemonies, Christian teaching and preaching is really just an "ideological justification for the worldly interests of a ruthless slaveholding class." The problem is that Parenti is a much better complainer than he is an explainer. He's at his best when he localizes his argument in a chapter that takes on the "strange death" of President Zachary Taylor. Only there is the mysterious process by which speculation transforms into official record given ample analysis. Parenti wants a people's history, not just another account of the "gentrification of history." Yet the actual story here is slanted, jumbledAtailored to fit Parenti's all-too-familiar contentions, illustrated at times with bullet points. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Parenti, a self-styled "progressive" thinker, seems to be telling us that history is written by the winners. How original! This one-sided emotional screed repeatedly sets up straw men and then knocks them down. For example, Parenti asserts that the Catholic Church often propped up the oppressive status quo during the Middle Ages. Does any serious student of history need to be reminded of that generally accepted assertion? In his dogmatic insistence on finding a proslavery conspiracy behind the death of Zachary Taylor, Parenti crosses over from paranoia to absurdity. Yet, this is a book worth reading. For objective scholars, it provides a window to the workings of a mind hog-tied by ideology. The general reader may find that some of the less extreme speculations provide interesting food for thought. In any case, this book serves as a useful reminder that the paranoid style in politics is alive and well at both ends of the political spectrum. Jay Freeman

From Kirkus Reviews
paper 0-87286-357-3 A somewhat scattered but well-considered manifesto for a history that serves as a weapon in the age-old war for our intellectual emancipation. A quarter of college seniors cannot come within 50 years of pinpointing Columbuss arrival in America; 40 percent cannot give the dates of the Civil War; most cannot distinguish WWI from WWII, except to guess that one preceded the other. Small wonder, says left-wing historian Parenti (Dirty Truths, 1996, etc.), for most written history is an ideologically safe commodity that serves the interests of the ruling classand that in any event is generally pretty uninteresting fare. At points in this collection of essays, Parenti examines the nature of American history textbooks, which, he believes, ignore or undervalue the contributions of ethnic minorities, women, and labor; considers the influence of Christianity on European culture, a tradition, he argues, that is replete with misogyny, anti-Semitism, and book-burning; and generally offers assessments of the nations past that would give Lynne Cheney and William Bennett fits. Opponents of left-wing points of view will immediately dismiss Parentis arguments as more liberal breast-beating; proponents of those points of view will likely admire this book, which suffers only from a tendency to repeat attention-getting slogans on matters of racism, sexism, and classism. Historically minded readers on the left and right alike will find Parentis account of the 1991 exhumation of President Zachary Taylorwho, some scholars have suspected, was assassinated by poisoningto be of much interest. Parenti takes issue with the conclusions of that long-after-the-fact inquest, writing that the chief medical examiners investigation pretended to a precision and thoroughness it never attained, while the media eagerly cloaked the inquest with an undeserved conclusiveness. Solid if surely controversial stuff. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Deserves to be a classic
This an absolutely sensational book that deserves to be read by a wider audience than it will probably get. Parenti touches on traditionally taboo subjects and sheds a whole lotta light on them. His section on the religious inquisition is outstanding along with the analysis of how powerful mainstream intellectuals have white washed the death of Zachary Taylor. If you have time to read only one history book all year make this the one.

And the truth shall set you free
I've read several of Parenti's other books, and I avidly absorb Chomsky, Zinn, etc. So the fact that I was thrilled to get this book for Christmas (from my Mom, who no doubt didn't look inside or she'd have been horrified by the critique of the Church) should come as no surprise. Parenti writes in a very comfortable style that is more accessible than Chomsky while retaining a very academic approach. I think this makes his work far more readable for the average person and certainly for people who are just approaching the field of progressive thought (such as my wife) and aren't ready for for the more analytical style of Chomsky. The subject matter I was quite familiar with before reading it, but it was nice to be able to reference the footnotes and have easy access to supporting documentation for my arguments with people who believe anything they see on TV. Thanks for a wonderful book, as usual, Michael!

Interesting
Readers of Zinn, Chomsky, Herman etc will find little new in reading this as other works by Parenti but this takes away little in the entertainment of the read. Like other Parenti books 'History As Mystery' is filled with many delightful facts rarely mentioned in mainstream history and scholarship. Aside from the distasteful apologetics of lenninism and the soviet union much of what Parenti says is highly accurate and relevant. The most novel chapter I feel was the one on Zachary Taylor being poisoned. Parenti makes a strong case for this being a possibility but does not do a good job linking this to the 'bias of modern historians.'
I have to admit however that I was somewhat dissapointed in 'History as Mystery.' I found little value in two chapters discussing the oppressiveness of the catholic church in the middle ages, and although the chapter on 'pyschopolitics' is highly amusing it is somewhat dated. A better Parenti book to read I feel would be 'Against Empire' which does a wonderful job debunking the ideas that the 'US only cares about world democracy' and that empires are artifacts of the ninteenth century. I got this book for 5$ at a used bookstore. Although not the best (in rhetoric or information) radical book I feel it was worth the cost!