I'd expect to see more Marxist analysis in the book if that were true. If memory serves me correctly there's absolutely no applied Marxist theory, which would have actually been more interesting in my biased opinion. Regardless, it's an interesting account of another side of American history.
Also that it's somehow not "real" history is strange to me. History is always a construction, a narrative on a series of events told from a given perspective. That Zinn is talking about the American experiment from an alternative perspective than that of its ruling class doesn't make it less real.
Zinns uses accopunts of events to frame an a argument he has made in advance. He is advancing a "perspective." The problem is it runs into disconfirming facts.
This argument isn't epistemology it's historiography. I'm sure Zinn's work isn't faultless, few if any are. But what issues there may be don't detract from the general drift of the book. It is a useful counterpoint to the bourgeois, imperialist narratives on the American experiment.
I'm also not sure what you mean by "Marxist conflict theory." No one in any Marxist circles I'm aware of uses that term. If you're just talking about the notion of class conflict the idea is hardly specific to Marx. It is prevalent in many forms throughout the long tradition of socialist thought.
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Zinns uses accopunts of events to frame an a argument he has made in advance. He is advancing a "perspective." The problem is it runs into disconfirming facts.
But then, you don't believe in facts, no?