A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present:
Since its original landmark publication in 1980, A People’s History of the United States has been chronicling American history from the bottom up, throwing out the official version of history taught in schools — with its emphasis on great men in high places — to focus on the street, the home, and the, workplace.
Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, A People’s History is the only volume to tell America’s story from the point of view of — and in the words of — America’s women, factory workers, African-Americans, Native Americans, the working poor, and immigrant laborers. As historian Howard Zinn shows, many of our country’s greatest battles — the fights for a fair wage, an eight-hour workday, child-labor laws, health and safety standards, universal suffrage, women’s rights, racial equality — were carried out at the grassroots level, against bloody resistance. Covering Christopher Columbus’s arrival through President Clinton’s first term, A People’s History of the United States, which was nominated for the American Book Award in 1981, features insightful analysis of the most important events in our history.
Revised, updated, and featuring a new after, word by the author, this special twentieth anniversary edition continues Zinn’s important contribution to a complete and balanced understanding of American history.
progressive slanted book – Nancy G. Murdoch – Havelock, NC United States
This is a terrible book designed to make Americans ashamed of their country, and fail to see that while American is not perfect, it is a good country.
More than a book, it seems to me a campaign against American exceptionalism and a focus on the evil that has occured. He spend chapters and pages extolling the evils of slavery and imperialism, but only one paragraph on G. Washington’s battles to wage our freedom. Abraham Lincoln is protrayed as an opportunist who gave not a fig about slavery.
In World War II he protrays the Soviet Union as the real hero and who sacrificed the most. It’s just simply not historially correct. The Soviet Union only entered the war in the Pacific late in 1945, and we had lost tens of thousands in that conflict, as well as in North Africa and Italy. This portion of the book reeks of Marxist leanings.
And even though Zinn seems to detest the free market and marketing strategy, he has used it to his utmost advantage on pushing this book as a tool for teachers, expecially those who may lean left or tend to be lazy on American history.
I would recommend a number of books that are not only more accurate, but will convince the reader that we do indeed have heroes in this country. A Patriot’s History of the United States is much more balanced and fair minded, as well as a number of books by Page. This, in my opinion, is a terrible book.
Consistently lauded for its lively, readable prose, this revised and updated edition of A People’s History of the United States turns traditional textbook history on its head. Howard Zinn infuses the often-submerged voices of blacks, women, American Indians, war resisters, and poor laborers of all nationalities into this thorough narrative that spans American history from Christopher Columbus’s arrival to an afterword on the Clinton presidency.
Addressing his trademark reversals of perspective, Zinn–a teacher, historian, and social activist for more than 20 years–explains, “My point is not that we must, in telling history, accuse, judge, condemn Columbus in absentia. It is too late for that; it would be a useless scholarly exercise in morality. But the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress (Hiroshima and Vietnam, to save Western civilization; Kronstadt and Hungary, to save socialism; nuclear proliferation, to save us all)–that is still with us. One reason these atrocities are still with us is that we have learned to bury them in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth.”
If your last experience of American history was brought to you by junior high school textbooks–or even if you’re a specialist–get ready for the other side of stories you may not even have heard. With its vivid descriptions of rarely noted events, A People’s History of the United States is required reading for anyone who wants to take a fresh look at the rich, rocky history of America.
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