Nonfiction Books in the Distribution

[Hyrdofluoric_Acid]

So this question might have an obvious answer, but where do books like "The Columbian Exchange" by Alfred Crosby or books like "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" fit in the distribution. I am just wondering because I just finished reading the latter and thought both due to the material it contains as well as its cultural significance much akin to books like "Silent Spring" or "The Jungle". Speaking of when I looked up "Silent Spring" on quinterest it had multiple different categories. So yeah....

[RexSueciae]

So this question might have an obvious answer, but where do books like "The Columbian Exchange" by Alfred Crosby or books like "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" fit in the distribution. I am just wondering because I just finished reading the latter and thought both due to the material it contains as well as its cultural significance much akin to books like "Silent Spring" or "The Jungle". Speaking of when I looked up "Silent Spring" on quinterest it had multiple different categories. So yeah....

It depends on the subject of the book, I'm sure. Silent Spring should probably be considered science, despite what it's categorized under on Quinterest. The Jungle, being fictional, is what I'd consider literature, albeit literature that may appear as a history clue due to its influence on governmental policy. (The same goes for Silent Spring.)

The Columbian Exchange and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee are almost certainly not going to appear as answerlines at the high school level. If they do (probably in a high-difficulty or college set), they would likely go under some variant of "Thought" as historiography. (A tossup on the Columbian exchange in general, and not the book about it, is also possible.) What is more likely, though, is for clues from one or the other to appear in history questions, especially if they present a new interpretation of events or a particularly important primary source.

[vinteuil]

This is one of the purposes of "general knowledge" and "mixed/other" distributions.

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

Things you learn from nonfiction books can be used to answer questions in such categories as science or history. I have never been a fan of writing history tossups about specific history books, because I think they unfairly and arbitrarily privilege people who learn the same facts in one certain way versus any other way. The exception would be books that were so important that they became historical events in and of themselves.

For example, I'm sure you could write a history tossup on Silent Spring composed entirely of clues about people's reaction to the book, actions taken by government and activists after the book, criticism of the book by opponents, etc. That would be different from a tossup on the contents of Silent Spring, though I believe for 2008 July Crisis I did write a history tossup on the contents of Silent Spring.

[at your pleasure]

So this question might have an obvious answer, but where do books like "The Columbian Exchange" by Alfred Crosby or books like "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" fit in the distribution. I am just wondering because I just finished reading the latter and thought both due to the material it contains as well as its cultural significance much akin to books like "Silent Spring" or "The Jungle". Speaking of when I looked up "Silent Spring" on quinterest it had multiple different categories. So yeah....

It depends on the subject of the book, I'm sure. Silent Spring should probably be considered science, despite what it's categorized under on Quinterest. The Jungle, being fictional, is what I'd consider literature, albeit literature that may appear as a history clue due to its influence on governmental policy. (The same goes for Silent Spring.)

The Columbian Exchange and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee are almost certainly not going to appear as answerlines at the high school level. If they do (probably in a high-difficulty or college set), they would likely go under some variant of "Thought" as historiography. (A tossup on the Columbian exchange in general, and not the book about it, is also possible.) What is more likely, though, is for clues from one or the other to appear in history questions, especially if they present a new interpretation of events or a particularly important primary source.

Historiography is perfectly acceptable within the history distribution; the reason it rarely comes up has less to do with iffy categories than with difficulty but it is perfectly reasonable to write a history tossup on Alfred Crosby for, say, an upper-difficulty college tournament. Likewise, it is not at all unusual for history questions at lower difficulties to use clues on historiography in history tossups(I wouldn't tossup The Columbian Exchange at a lower-difficulty tournament but using it as a lead-in for a tossup at a easier tournament is probably OK). Tossups on texts that are primarily important as historical sources rather than works of literature are also perfectly acceptable in the history distribution, although again they are almost always far too hard for the vast majority of tournaments.