AMERICA II. Continued
William Appleman Williams's response to the comments on
his reading of American history by Michael Harrington, Arthur Schle–
singer, Jr. and Howard Zinn
(PR
#4,1970), and Mr. Harrington's and
Mr.
Schlesinger's replies, continue PR's discussion of what's happening
to America. Readers' comments are invited.
William Appleman Williams
Thank you for taking the book seriously.
Let me begin with some thoughts about Howard Zinn's comments,
then consider various specific criticisms and conclude with a reply to
Michael Harrington's concern that I am too pessimistic.
Zinn states his major point on page 521, asserting that I make at
best a weak connection between my objective (helping the reader 'reval–
uate and change his awareness) and my reconstruction and analysis. He
leaves me unpersuaded for several reasons. I can get at one of them by
exploring his kind and generous praise for
The Tragedy of American
Diplomacy
as effortlessly relevant and his criticism of
The Roots
as
strained and, in the end, irrelevant. He overlooks, it seems
to
me, the
important consideration that they are different kinds of books.
Any book has to be approached, and to a significant degree under–
stood, in terms of three criteria: what the author is trying to do; with
what audience is he trying to establish a dialogue; and where, in the
development of his exploration of the subject, he is making those ef–
forts. The answers to those questions are quite different for
The Tragedy
and
The Roots. The Tragedy
came at the end of a decade of extensive
and intensive research that had been worked over in lectures, in con–
versations with students and colleagues, in monographic and popular
articles and in an extremely detailed book on
American-Russian Rela–
tions:
1784-1947.
The Tragedy
was the result of stepping back and de–
ciding to write an analytical and interpretative essay directed to the
general public.
I seriously considered writing a similar book from the research,
discussion and thought that provides the underpinning for
The Roots.
The perceptive reader, I am sure, can see the skeleton (and even a
bit more) of such an essay in the introduction to
The Roots.
That ap–
proach might have produced a better book per se, as well as one more
