[PornoDoggy]

I don't find "history books are the most slanted and sanitized crap out there" to be true. If you get your history from historical novels and the like, yes, there is a bias. If you depend exclusively on first-hand accounts (memoirs and autobiographies, etc.) you can't get a clear picture. History TEXTBOOKS, IMHO, are often written with a strong bias and aimed at the least common denominator; but particularly in a society like America, if you look hard enough you can find a wide variety of interpretations of the same events.

Reading history is like watching the news - depending on one source alone is folly. If you read only American or British histories of the 2nd world war (particularly those written before about 1990) you come away with a totally erroneous picture of the war. If you want to learn something about a war, you cannot simply read a chronology of battles - because wars are seldom started by the military. During the Cold War, at times of high tension I used to listen to Radio Moscow (Torone, are you taking this down?) when I could get it on shortwave, just to see what the other side was saying. I believed what I heard even less than I did American network interpretations of events - but it was interesting to hear their perspective.

One of the things I find most amusing is that often people who are the most cynical and suspicious of where you get your news won't even reveal where they get theirs.