Peter Watkin’s THE BATTLE OF CULLODEN, which features actual documentary newsreel footage and interviews from the 18th-century battle. :-)
Seriously, it’s a very important mockumentary about a real historical event. I hope it’s available on DVD or something.
a genuinely proletariat rendering of the tolpuddle martyrs story and a celebration of methodism and its part in working-class self determination!
Anatoly Fomenko is the only one not afraid to tell the real truth!
@ to Welshy: You may want to take Malcolm X’s autobiography off that list. It was written by Alex Haley, who would later be confronted with charges of plagiarism regarding “Roots.”
I would add to your list the book, “…And Die in the West: The Story of the O.K. Corral Gunfight,” by Paula Mitchell Marks.
@Mike
While reading an overview of that book I noticed she spends time on the closing of public housing, schools, and hospitals in New Orleans after Katrina. I don’t know how much of the book she dedicates to this issue, but if you found it interesting I’d recommend David Simon’s Treme, which began to touch upon the issue in its first season. If the brilliance of the The Wire and his written works are any indication I’d be surprised if Simon doesn’t provide an honest and in depth perspective on the issue.
Also, for some more recent history, I’d recommend PBS’s Frontline. It’s far and away the best investigative journalism around today.
Adam, I’m not quite as hot on The Wire as I used to be but it i still probably the crowning achievement in American television that I’ve seen (the only possible contenders that I;m not familiar with are Mad Men and Breaking Bad). I don’t want to bash the show in a paragraph because it deserves a re-watch and a lengthy appraisal.
That being said I will pick up Treme whenever it becomes available. The trailer for the show looked like it had some of the things I feel the Wire is missing, although glancing at some of the responses to the show here makes me wary. Some people complained about the early episodes but said it got better as the plot kicked in. Plot is what i’m trying to get away from!:)
As far as The Shock Doctrine, it’s a vast overview of a particularly heinous practice so she doesn’t go into serious detail about aspects of Katrina that don’t concern that practice.
Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States
Studs Terkel’s oral histories, esp. Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do
Um, sorry… you’re looking for a “non-whitewashed” version of history in Hunter S. Thompson? No sorry, you’re just looking for a history that fits your taste. If you want real history, invent a time machine ‘cause you’re never going to find a “true” history.
Here’s a definition of the word ‘whitewash’ that I found in the dictionary:
“To conceal or gloss over (wrongdoing, for example)”
Now, would you accuse Hunter Thompson of doing that? His opinions may have not have been objective (whose are?), but that doesn’t mean he whitewashed the truth; in fact, crazy bastards like Thompson are the guys willing to tell the ugly truth when it needs to be told.
Anyway, could you actually recommend a few books? I’m open to all suggestions, unless it’s conservative history (deny, deny, deny).
Thucydides is pretty good, Polybius isn’t horrible, Tacitus is known as being particularly ‘modern’ and ‘historical.’ Exactly what period of history are you looking for? Livy is nice if you like wierd Roman legends, but he’s not very historical and he describes long periods of not much going on.
As for Hunter S. Thompson, he goes the opposite way of “whitewashing.” He amplifies certain aspects of history, so I guess you could say he “whitewashes” the rest out (i.e. the “norm”).
Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad was riveting reading
@Welshy: Cuthbert Collin Davies was a distinguished Welsh historian of Indian history. Some years ago there was an interesting TV series, The Dragon Has Two Tongues, with 2 Welsh historians, one Conservative, one Leftist anti-imperialist, arguing over the truth of all major events and periods of Welsh history, and neatly showing how subjective it all is- history really is mainly the propaganda of winners.
I’ve done 2 historical lists relating to films in the Lists section:19th Century Britain, and a Cinematic History of Humankind, and would welcome suggestions for either
“Exactly what period of history are you looking for?”
All periods. I wasn’t specific for a reason!
“As for Hunter S. Thompson, he goes the opposite way of “whitewashing.” He amplifies certain aspects of history, so I guess you could say he “whitewashes” the rest out (i.e. the “norm”).”
Seeing as the ‘norm’ was covered by every other American journalist, why would he have wasted his time on it? He gained his reputation from telling the truth, basically; even his detractors accepted that he was simply putting into print what other journalists couldn’t afford to at the time.
The only American journalists currently carrying on that tradition on are the crazy bastards who write for The Exile (Mark Ames, Yasha Levine, John Dolan and other assorted crazies). They may veer dangerously close to nihilism sometimes, but I suppose it’s hard to be optimistic when uncovering corruption every other day of your life.
These guys don’t subscribe to specific ideologies so I trust them a lot more than I would an unapologetic Marxist.
Barbara Tuchman is a good historian: The Guns of August, The Proud Tower, A Distant Mirror, etc.
“Conceived in Liberty” by Murray Rothbard.
Volume One covers the discovery of the Americas and the colonies in the 17th century
Volume Two covers the period of “salutary neglect” in the first half of the 18th century
Volume Three covers the advance to revolution, from 1760-1775
Volume Four covers the political, military, and ideological history of the revolution and after
http://mises.org/store/Conceived-in-Liberty-4-Volume-Set-P1094.aspx
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Making-English-Working-Penguin-History/dp/0140136037
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Socialism-Sceptical-Age-Ralph-Miliband/dp/0745614272/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1286030659&sr=1-3
true history = jumbo shrimp
Why do you assume Hunter Thompson is telling you the truth?
No doubt he had moments of clarity….
dp
Alexis de Tocqueville- Old Regime and the Revolution and Democracy in America
Paul Kennedy- The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
“Why do you assume Hunter Thompson is telling you the truth?”
He had no reason to lie, apart from actions that may have resulted in a jail sentence :D
Thanks for the recommendations; I’ll add them to my list.
@ Welshy:
Good answer; here reworded:
Thompson used lies to tell the truth.
Nick Tosches’s Hellfire, Dino, and The Devil and Sonny Liston.
Aflwydd
I decided to create the thread due to me never knowing what history books actually contain true history! There’s so many history books that whitewash the truth that I’ve placed my trust in the intelligent MUBI population to compile a list of books that aren’t written with an agenda to protect certain people’s reputations.
I’ll start things off then:
David Simon – Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets (A true documentation of your average detective)
Hunter S. Thompson – Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 (You won’t find any whitewashing here)
Malcolm X – The Autobiography of Malcolm X (One of the most important autobiographies about one of the most interesting men of the Twentieth century)
You can all do a LOT better than that!