Howard Zinn – A People’s History of the United States – 1492 to Present (1980)
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A classic since its original landmark publication in 1980, Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States is the first scholarly work to tell America’s story from the bottom up – 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.
From Columbus to the Revolution to slavery and the Civil War – from World War II to the election of George W. Bush and the “War on Terror” – A People’s History of the United States is an important and necessary contribution to a complete and balanced understanding of American history.
2009 Howard Zinn; (P)2009 HarperCollins Publishers
“Zinn’s work is a vital corrective to triumphalist accounts.” (Publishers Weekly)
By the way, here is some reaction to the book. Looking at those who criticize the book the most scathingly, it makes me all the more admire the book. Enjoy!
When A People’s History of the United States was published in 1980, future Columbia University historian Eric Foner reviewed it in The New York Times:
Professor Zinn writes with an enthusiasm rarely encountered in the leaden prose of academic history, and his text is studded with telling quotations from labor leaders, war resisters and fugitive slaves. There are vivid descriptions of events that are usually ignored, such as the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and the brutal suppression of the Philippine independence movement at the turn of this century. Professor Zinn’s chapter on Vietnam-bringing to life once again the free-fire zones, secret bombings, massacres and cover-ups-should be required reading for a new generation of students now facing conscription.
Blacks, Indians, women, and laborers appear either as rebels or as victims. Less dramatic but more typical lives-people struggling to survive with dignity in difficult circumstances-receive little attention. .A People’s History reflects a deeply pessimistic vision of the American experience.
Foner called for “an integrated account incorporating Thomas Jefferson and his slaves, Andrew Jackson and the Indians, Woodrow Wilson and the Wobblies.”
Taking a negative view of the book, Harvard University historian Oscar Handlin wrote in a review in The American Scholar:
Hence the deranged quality of this fairy tale, in which the incidents are made to fit the legend, no matter how intractable the evidence of American history. It may be unfair to expose to critical scrutiny a work patched together from secondary sources, many used uncritically (Jennings, Williams), others ravaged for material torn out of context (Young, Pike). Any careful reader will perceive that Zinn is a stranger to evidence bearing upon the people about whom he purports to write. But only critics who know the sources will recognize the complex array of devices that pervert his pages. … On the other hand, the book conveniently omits whatever does not fit its overriding thesis. … It would be a mistake, however, to regard Zinn as merely Anti-American. Brendan Behan once observed that whoever hated America hated mankind, and hatred of mankind is the dominant tone of Zinn’s book. … He lavishes indiscriminate condemnation upon all the works of man – that is, upon civilization, a word he usually encloses in quotation marks.
In the Washington Post Book World, reviewer Michael Kammen, a professor of American History, wrote:
I wish that I could pronounce Zinn’s book a great success, but it is not. It is a synthesis of the radical and revisionist historiography of the past decade. . . Not only does the book read like a scissors and paste-pot job, but even less attractive, so much attention to historians, historiography and historical polemic leaves precious little space for the substance of history. … We do deserve a people’s history; but not a simpleminded history, too often of fools, knaves and Robin Hoods. We need a judicious people’s history because the people are entitled to have their history whole; not just those parts that will anger or embarrass them. … If that is asking for the moon, then we will cheerfully settle for balanced history.
Writing in The New York Times, columnist Bob Herbert wrote:
Mr. Zinn was often taken to task for peeling back the rosy veneer of much of American history to reveal sordid realities that had remained hidden for too long. [.] What was so radical about believing that workers should get a fair shake on the job, that corporations have too much power over our lives and much too much influence with the government, that wars are so murderously destructive that alternatives to warfare should be found, that blacks and other racial and ethnic minorities should have the same rights as whites, that the interests of powerful political leaders and corporate elites are not the same as those of ordinary people who are struggling from week to week to make ends meet?
Writing in Dissent, Georgetown University history professor Michael Kazin argued that Zinn is too focused on class conflict, and wrongly attributes sinister motives to the American political elite. He characterized the book as an overly simplistic narrative of elite villains and oppressed people, with no attempt to understand historical actors in the context of the time in which they lived.
Kazin wrote:
The ironic effect of such portraits of rulers is to rob ‘the people’ of cultural richness and variety, characteristics that might gain the respect and not just the sympathy of contemporary readers. For Zinn, ordinary Americans seem to live only to fight the rich and haughty and, inevitably, to be fooled by them.
A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present
Written by: Howard Zinn
Narrated by: Jeff Zinn
Length: 34 hrs and 12 mins
Unabridged Audiobook
Release Date:12-14-09
Publisher: HarperAudio
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