On Jan 6, 1:56 am, Phoenix clearspringlabs.com> wrote:

I took a brief break after finishing _American Prometheus_ by Kai Bird
and Martin Sherwin, a biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer with special
emphasis on the attacks on his patriotism during the McCarthy era. It
was a hard book to put down with lots of Russian-spy-story kind of
suspense and cause for outrage at the ways the government was
manipulated to satisfy the egos and ambitions of powerful men.

It was my third biography in a row and I started getting tired of the
same sad endings that they had in common.

As a gift from my sons, I received Howard Zinn's _A People's History
of the United States_. I had, obviously, heard of this but never read
it before. It's very enlightening and infuriating in all the
appropriately right ways though I must say that, while the facts he
conveys are important some of his thesis about the motivations of the
book's various oppressors seem a little far-fetched to me. He frankly
gives them too much credit for clever calculation and execution rather
than what generally seems more likely to me: that circumstances led to
the events and those in power rode the tides to their maxium benefit,
largely by chance.

I'm enjoying it though.

Lane