A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present (original 1980; edition 2001)

The voices of the repressed and the many are often ignored. Kudos to Zinn for gathering them up into an honest and introspective easy read. ( )

In spite of having gone and got a PhD in history (nearly), this is still one of my favorites, and clearly as influential as Charles & Mary Beard were in their day. ( )

Teaching history is one of the first opportunities a nation has to begin propagandising its citizens directly. We all know that our nation (this goes for all nations, not just the US) never, never, never does anything wrong. Our country's newspapers chronicle the munificence, benevolence and philanthropy of our nation every single day. Our nation never does anything wrong, it's only the other nations of the world that do bad and wrong things.

History as a subject in school is merely a retelling of the events that play out in the newspapers every day in your country. Standard history textbooks are nothing more than a collection of those front pages from the most mainstream, establishment-oriented newspapers in your country which is why for me history was the one subject in school I could never understand the need to study.

Studying history in school is so boring. It was always guaranteed (for me) to be one subject that put me to sleep in class. The history textbooks went something like this, "Our country is great. We fought a battle over here and over there and defeated the enemy in order to secure the safety of our citizens. We are good. We never do bad things. The world is a better place with us as a country in it. Patriotism is next to godliness and to question loyalty to the flag is what criminals (who do drugs) do. People in other countries are not as good as we are. We are the best and we always win (good always triumphs over evil). Our expansion was a necessity and was borne out of a need to secure our borders and make our citizens safe. We are a country of common people. We are you. You make up our country. Thank you for creating our country. Without you, we would not be a country." That what I remember about learning history in school. What a lie. What a fucking lie. Yawn.

Howard Zinn's book is nothing, I repeat, NOTHING like history textbooks they used when I went to school.

History, as taught in school (in every? country of the world) is an imperialist's chronology of events that created and shaped that particular country. That version of history, as taught in textbooks, is a lie. History textbooks are nothing more than the beginning of a person's indoctrination into a particular country's citizenry. There is no class where a nation can shape the views of its citizens more than history, and as a subject preparing you for life, it's the most useless subject a school system can teach a student, but you'll find it's one of the most critical subjects as defined by a country's school curriculum developers. Nothing learned in history is useful in every day life less than what you learned in history. Although it may be of great interest to some people, history holds no real value in the every day world like, for example, maths or reading or grammar or science or foreign languages.

Read this book and take one thing away from it: our countries lie to us every day and this book documents many, many of those lies which were taught to us in school and which our children are learning today. We were lied to. Our government lied to us. Governments lie to us. Governments lie. Stop believing what your government tells you, because it's all a lie. Buy this book, read it, learn from it, and make sure you correct the lies your children are learning in school. It'll make them better citizens tomorrow and your country will be a better country for it. ( )

I admire Zinn for having the courage, as an historian, to allow his work to reflect the changes he experienced in moral perspective after serving in World War II. He has given interviews in which he discusses the difference between killing from a remote distance and then seeing the brutality and suffering that is war. His work, and A People's History is a great example, tries to help us understand a similar problem in perspective: the difference between history writ large, the hagiographies of "great men," and the history of important voices and movements that have been omitted and for the most part dismissed. ( )

This is a monumental volume, and a crucial contribution to the telling of American history. Zinn affirms, both at the outset and the conclusion of the book, that he has no interest in providing an objective analysis of American history. He is not trying to critically evaluate the arguments of opposing viewpoints, and he makes little room for their own words. While I have some critical things to say on this point below, by and large, it is the real strength of the book.

Zinn is primarily interested in telling the stories of oppression and resistance that have been lost in American history. These stories are essential reading for any American citizen. One reason for this is that Zinn largely lets people tell their own story, in their own words. Even if one were ultimately to argue that these views are not representative of the conditions or views of most Americans, it is vital to recognize the form and content of dissent to views we take for granted today. If we do not recognize that dissent, it becomes all too easy to see our own assumptions as self-evident truths, rather than claims which were subject to debate, and perhaps ought to be again.

I admire Zinn's explicit statement of his own bias. If he were offering an argument for a comprehensive take on American history (e.g., for the view that he clearly holds, which is that the primary driver of many of the major developments in American history is the economic success of the upper classes), this bias would be a hindrance. We would not have much reason to take the argument seriously if it did not engage with its critics. Zinn's aim, however, is something different. I don't see him as offering that argument. I see him as giving voice to a whole swath of Americans long ignored. His bias is in his selection of voices to cover, and the omissions that are a consequence of these selections. By being explicit about this, he takes the reader's intelligence seriously. Any student of American history has a plethora of other sources taking opposing views, and Zinn provides us with a new set of story and data, and asks us to integrate the stories he tells with the story we have long taken as standard.

I was particularly struck by a passage on the Founding Fathers, who are widely regarded with a heroic lens. Look back on their failures, particularly with regard to slavery, we might be tempted to say: "true, but it's part of the culture, and they can hardly be blamed for failing to throw off all of those cultural influences." To this, Zinn writes:

"Reformers and radicals, looking discontentedly at history, are often accused of expecting too much from a past political epoch - and sometimes they do. But the point of noting those outside the arc of human rights in the Declaration is not, centuries late and pointlessly, to lay impossible moral burdens on that time. It is to try to understand the way in which the declaration functioned to mobilize certain groups of Americans, ignoring others." (73)

It is tempting to read Zinn's book as a moral indictment. While there is some of that going on, it is clear that Zinn's foremost aim is to bring out the systematic ways in which certain groups and certain views have been marginalized and oppressed in American history. We do not need to read him as someone out to "get" certain historical figures. Instead, his aim, which he successfully achieves, is to show that the historical events we have long understood in one light have another side to them, and that other side is integral to understanding the history of oppression and marginalization in American history.

The book is at is strongest when giving the oppressed space to tell their own stories. Indeed, the weakest chapters of the book are the two added chapters on the Clinton Presidency and the War on Terror, as those chapters are primarily composed of Zinn himself telling us about the effect of the Clinton and Bush presidencies on the people.

While the focus on neglected voices is the greatest strength of the book, it also means that the book does not provide a great deal of integrative or reflective work. For example, Zinn asks an important question: how does a political-economic system perpetuate itself through the generations? Zinn generally is suspicious of the idea (rightly so) that economic motives only work through conscious decision making. But that leaves unanswered the really interesting question - how are they perpetuated? How are the bounds of discourse fixed, and how are they maintained by politicians, journalists and academics?

That said, answering this question would take the book more in a different direction. While it is disappointing to this reader that we do not have the space to pursue these interesting questions, the book is stronger for it. Anyone with an interest in American history should know the voices of dissent in that history, whatever one's ultimate political viewpoint on that dissent. Zinn's book is an essential contribution to that aim.