Book by Howard Zinn - A People's History of the United States

Summary

Howard Zinn's classic work of populist history, updated for a new generation.

Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, A People's History of the United States 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, working poor, and immigrant laborers.

This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading and more.

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Editorial Reviews

Review: A People's History of the United States (Eric Foner, New York Times Book Review )

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 to 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.

Review: A People's History of the United States (Publishers Weekly)

According to this classic of revisionist American history, narratives of national unity and progress are a smoke screen disguising the ceaseless conflict between elites and the masses whom they oppress and exploit. Historian Zinn sides with the latter group in chronicling Indians' struggle against Europeans, blacks' struggle against racism, women's struggle against patriarchy, and workers' struggle against capitalists.

First published in 1980, the volume sums up decades of post-war scholarship into a definitive statement of leftist, multicultural, anti-imperialist historiography. This edition updates that project with new chapters on the Clinton and Bush presidencies, which deplore Clinton's pro-business agenda, celebrate the 1999 Seattle anti-globalization protests and apologize for previous editions' slighting of the struggles of Latinos and gays. Zinn's work is an vital corrective to triumphalist accounts, but his uncompromising radicalism shades, at times, into cynicism. Zinn views the Bill of Rights, universal suffrage, affirmative action and collective bargaining not as fundamental (albeit imperfect) extensions of freedom, but as tactical concessions by monied elites to defuse and contain more revolutionary impulses; voting, in fact, is but the most insidious of the "controls." It's too bad that Zinn dismisses two centuries of talk about "patriotism, democracy, national interest" as mere "slogans" and "pretense," because the history he recounts is in large part the effort of downtrodden people to claim these ideals for their own.

Member Reviews

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Sunrise88	Posted on Dec 17, 2009 4:12 PM
Zinn provides a very different view of history. I wouldn't call it one of my favorite books, but A People's History is definitely worth a read. The book includes so many events and perspectives that most don't normally hear about. It definitely makes a nice reference if you're ever looking up something relating to US history. I've heard some say that Zinn's account of history is boring and depressing. It's been a couple of years since I read the book in its entirety, but I don't recall being particularly bored or depressed by it. I'll agree that Zinn perhaps focuses too much on class conflict and on the negative aspects of history while downplaying the positive ones. At the same time, you can't really fault the guy for pointing out what was still wrong with particular time periods. Zinn demonstrates a refusal to be content with the status quo which I feel is something all of us should have.
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Biography

Howard Zinn, professor emeritus at Boston University, is a historian, playwright, and social activist. The author of numerous books, including the classic A People's History of the United States, he has received the Lannan Foundation Literary Award for Nonfiction, and the Eugene V. Debs Award for his writing and political activism.

Author Interview

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Interview with Howard Zinn (Tomdispatch)
- Sep 8, 2005

Q. You and Anthony Arnove just came out with a new book, Voices of a People's History of the United States, featuring American voices of resistance from our earliest moments to late last night. Now, we have a striking new voice of resistance, Cindy Sheehan. I was wondering what you made of her?

A. Often a protest movement that's already underway -- and the present antiwar movement was underway even before the Iraq War began -- gets a special impetus, a special spark, from one person's act of defiance. I think of Rosa Parks and that one act of hers and what it meant. ... (Continue Reading).

Interview with Howard Zinn (David Barsamian, Z Magazine)

Q. I want to know something about your roots, growing up in the projects on the lower east side.

A. I grew up in the slums of Brooklyn. Not projects. They weren't advanced enough to have projects. I think maybe the first New Deal housing project was in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. But that was too good for us. I grew up in the slums of Brooklyn, a working class family. My parents were European immigrants, factory workers in New York. They met as factory workers. They were Jewish immigrants. My father came from Austria, my mother from Asiatic Russia, Siberia. I remember moving all the time. We were always one step ahead of the landlord. And changing schools all the time. My father struggled, went from job to job, he was unemployed and under WPA. I wanted to get out of the house all the time. Where we lived was never a nice place to be. So I was in the streets a lot. I understand what it's like for kids to live in and prefer the streets. That's how I grew up.

When I got to be college age I went to work in a shipyard and became a shipyard worker for three years. My family needed the money. The east side came later, after the war. I volunteered for the Air Force and was a bombardier. I got married before I went overseas. After the war my wife and I first lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant in a rat-infested basement. I"m building up my sordid past, trying to evoke tears. We were so happy when we were accepted into the Lillian Wall housing project, a low-income housing project on the east side of New York. We lived there for seven years while I went to school under the GI bill and to graduate school at Columbia. My wife worked. Our two kids were in nursery school.

What was the language at home? Did you speak Yiddish?

Not me. My parents spoke Yiddish to each other, so I understood it. When they spoke to us they spoke English, nicely accented, with a few Yiddish words thrown in. I never actually used Yiddish, but I still can under ... continue reading >

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Video

Howard Zinn in "You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train"

Howard Zinn discusses the concept of just war and his experience as an Air Force pilot in World War II.

Howard Zinn in "You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train"	Howard Zinn on what the classroom didn't teach him about the American Empire.

Audio

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	Democracy Now: Readings From Howard Zinn�s Voices of a People�s History of the United States
	The People's Historian: An intimate conversation with historian Howard Zinn on WBUR's On Point

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A People's History of the United States

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