Mike Konopacki

A People's History of the American Empire is in many ways a typical Howard Zinn work of history. It tells you everything you'll never learn by reading a high school history textbook. For instance, how did the United States, a peace-loving, God-fearing nation with no imperial ambitions whatsoever, end up with such a large empire? The usual way, Zinn reports: by sending poor white soldiers to kill poor brown people and steal their resources...claiming the moral high ground all the while. show more (Manifest Destiny = "God WANTS us to kill all the Native Americans!")

The difference with this work of Zinn: it's presented in comic book form. ("Graphic novel" form, if you insist.) The art is simple but effective, supplemented with plenty of period imagery: black & white photos, newspapers, et cetera. The idea is to make Zinn more accessible, I suppose. Let's hope plenty of people sample this book and then move on to Zinn's magnum opus, A People's History of the United States. show less

This is a graphic novel adaptation of Zinn’s famous history book, “A People’s History of the United States.”

It doesn’t cover everything in “A People’s History...”, but starts with the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890, when American soldiers killed or wounded 300 Native Americans in about an hour. In the 1890’s, America was going through a depression, so a foreign enemy was needed against which to rally the public (along with finding new markets to exploit). The Cuban show more Revolution was attempting to throw off four centuries of Spanish rule. The sister of a Cuban rebel leader told the story of being searched for secret documents by a Spanish matron while on a US steamer. The American press turned it into an accusation by Spain that America was too weak to defend the honor of its women, and that women on American steamers were being strip searched. Calls were made to annex Cuba. The spark needed to start the Spanish-American War was the destruction of an American battleship in Havana harbor (“Remember the Maine”). Spain was blamed, but the US government was skeptical.

During World War I, the Espionage Act was passed to criminalize any antiwar talk that could be interpreted as discouraging enlistment. The law also secretly empowered private associations to spy on “disloyal” Americans. After World War II was won, but not officially over, the new American empire decided to start testing its new weapons on defenseless people. Zinn was involved in a bombing raid on a French town where several thousand German soldiers waited for the end of the war. On that day, over 1200 planes dropped nearly 400,000 gallons of napalm on the town of Royan.

Did you know that during the war, the wearing of zoot suits was considered dangerous, and was a kind of draft resistance? This book also looks at Vietnam, the Civil Rights era, the Pentagon Papers, the Contra War in Nicaragua, and the Iranian Revolution. It has a bibliography for those who want to read further.

For those who have never read “A People’s History of the United States,” perhaps intimidated by its several hundred page length, this is a wonderful alternative. For those who have read Zinn’s book, this helps to put a face to the names, and is still very highly recommended. show less

Howard Zinn, as always, sees history from the point of view of people, not nations.

From the point of view of a nation, conquest is good, and war is strategic. From the point of view of individual people, not so much. He makes this clear.

I would like to teach from this book but will have to dance a very nimble dance not to seem like a crazy hippie. Zinn doesn't make up his facts, but they are the ones that school textbooks tend to gloss over.

When I was a kid I inherited my uncle's Mad magazine collection which had some comic books mixed in including a three-part series about the Civil War. This was a hagiographic history where all the soldiers called one another "Billy Yank" and "Johnny Reb" done in the style of Classics Illustrated. A People's History of American Empire is a very different comic book history. Based on Zinn's A People's History of the United States as well as Zinn's own life this is a graphic depiction of the show more times in American history where the nation failed to live up to the standards of liberty and equality for all. Mainly this involves the repression of people within the United States (Indians, blacks, immigrants, and labor), wars in foreign lands (Phillipines, Vietnam, and Iraq) and intervention into the autonomy of other nations (Iran, El Salvador, and many more) for the benefit of powerful and wealth American elite. A comic version of Zinn narrates the book frequently turning over the story to characters contemporary to the events described. Interspersed in this narrative are stories of the social movements in America such as Civil Rights, labor, and anti-war.

I particular found it interesting in the parts that covered events I'd only heard of or knew nothing about, such as:

• The Black 25th Infantry who fought valiantly at San Juan Hill but were denied credit.


• The Jitterbug Riot


• The counter-cultural protests of R&B fandom in the 1950's.


• The Diem Regime and South Vietnam "essentially a creation of the United States."


• The Second Battle of Wounded Knee


• Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers

This is a good introduction to the other side of American history in a brief and well-illustrated manner. show less