My argument cannot be against selection, simplification,
emphasis, which are inevitable for both cartographers and
historians. But the mapmaker's distortion is a
technical necessity for a common purpose shared
by all people who need maps. The historian's distortion
is more than technical, it is ideological; it is released into a world
of contending interests, where any chosen emphasis supports (whether
the historian means to or not) some kind of interest, whether
economic or political or racial or national or sexual.
-- Howard Zinn, People's History of the United States, p.8
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