0.5 to 1.0 stars. The quintessential history book for American's who hate America. My biggest problem with this book is not its existence but that it is too often introduced to young people, not as an alternative viewpoint, but as a "primary" guide to American history. As someone who encourages free and open debate and believes America's greatest virtue is the ability of its people to criticize its leaders and speak freely about all issues, I think it is important to have books like this, inaccurate and misguided as they may be. However, holding books like this up as texts to be tought to young students as opposed to a radical and minority viewpoint is just another indication of how disastrous our educational system has become.

MIND BLOWN

I read this book for my AP United States History class required summer reading. I borrowed/recieved it from a friend who had a copy and had taken the class already. A hefty little read it appeared far to borish and complex--a weeks long read at least, and most likely I felt I'd end up trudging through the book word by word without an soul or passion for the text. Begrudgedly I opened up the book and began to run my eyes across the first few sentences. I was completely aghast at the bitter-tone, the rough harshness around the edges of commentary. A political scientist with a message. The United States has been built on lies, violence, and racism. A horrific truth; yet the book gives hope to the those who believe in America. Should be required reading for all those interested in American History.

You can't review Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" without first declaring your own political bias, so here's a brief summary of mine:

I grew up in a Communist-sympathizing household in Park Slope, that most liberal of all left-leaning Brooklyn neighborhoods. My father had a clear, if sometimes simplistic world-view: the rich were evil, and whatever side of an issue they were on, good people should be on the other side. Like most children, I rebelled, and by college, my politics could best be described as left-leaning centrism in the Clintonian sense. To my dad, this was about as bad as being a fascist or a Republican, and for years I avoided talking with him about politics.

After 9/11, like most Americans, I reflexively drifted further to the right on foreign policy- mostly out of shock and a desire for revenge. While my parents were down in DC protesting the second Gulf War, I secretly felt a certain satisfaction at watching a tyrant like Saddam Hussein get taken down. Over the next ten years, however, I found myself drifting back towards the center- the 9/11 bloodlust wore off and I was left with doubts about the wars. At the same time, I was beginning to notice some dispiriting trends in our domestic situation- especially the constant cycle of boom and bust, the seemingly bottomless materialism of our popular culture, and the growing shrillness of the political debates.

And then 2008 came along, when the banks blew up America. Few of my friends had benefited from the housing bubble (most were too young or too poor to buy property)- so most of us felt doubly fucked: first, by the run up in housing prices, which put even the limited prosperity of our parents generation out of reach, and second, by the bust, which put a lot of us out of work. Watching the government turn around and bail out the banks with our tax money only added insult to injury. And that's around the time I realized that my dad had been right all along: the rich really did control our country, through the banks and the government, and they really were evil- possessed of a monstrous selfishness that cared only for themselves, and nothing about the rest of us.

So, you could say that when I picked up Zinn's book seven weeks ago, I was primed to be receptive to his message. And that message is simple: the rich have screwed the poor in America since the first day the Europeans arrived. In fact, since before they arrived, as illustrated by my favorite anecdote in the book:

Then, on October 12, a sailor called Rodrigo saw the early morning moon shining on white sands, and cried out. It was an island in the Bahamas, the Caribbean sea. The first man to sight land was supposed to get a yearly pension of 10,000 maravedis for life, but Rodrigo never got it. Columbus claimed he had seen a light the evening before. He got the reward.

And that screwing continued- first, the Native Americans on Hispanola were wiped out (in a genocide that largely goes unmentioned, even in books like Charles Mann's 1491.) Then the Native Americans on the mainland were destroyed. Then the Blacks were kidnapped from Africa, and brutally oppressed for hundreds of years in our fields. So were the poor whites, and the minorities, who were often treated as bad as the slaves. Women, of course, were oppressed the whole time, even in the richest houses. And Zinn observes that even as the general level of prosperity in the country increased, the gains were mostly hoarded by rich white men. This quote is from Henry George, a newspaperman in 1879- but reading Zinn, you come to feel like it could have been written at any time in the last 400 years:

It is true that wealth has been greatly increased, and that the average of comfort, leisure and refinement has been raised, but these gains are not general. In them the lowest class do not share... This association of poverty with progress is the great enigma of our times... there is a vague but general feeling of disappointment, an increased bitterness among the working classes, a widespread feeling of unrest and brooding revolution.

Zinn also makes a convincing case that the method by which the rich kept these gains was straightforward: whenever they were threatened by potential uprisings of people's movements, they simply turned one group against another. For instance, the poor whites against the slaves, or the poor farmers against the Indians, or the poor working men against the newly arrived immigrants, or, when the heat really got too strong, the entire country against another country- as in the Spanish-American War in the late 19th Century.

All this is not to say that I was in total agreement with Zinn. Like many of his readers, I had two different kinds of objections. The first were ones of scope- I found it puzzling that he omitted some struggles (like those of Asians or Hispanics on the West Coast, or the Gays, or the handicapped), while focusing so much energy on others (for instance, the struggles of the radical unionists like the Wobblies.) I was also confused by how little there was on violent leftist radicalism in the 60s and 70s- he hardly mentions The Weathermen, the SLA, the Chicago Seven, etc. Given how many pages he spends on his generally excellent chapters on the Civil Rights Movement and the anti-Vietnam struggle, these omissions seemed weird- was he consciously trying to soften the image of the left? Likewise, Zinn's discussion of events since 1980 (added in later versions of the book), seem a little breezy- much lighter on quotes and detail than the foregoing chapters.

My second class of objections were about bias. Now, Zinn does a good job of defusing these- for instance, in his afterward, he writes:

This is a biased account... I am not troubled by that, because the mountain of history books under which we all stand leans so heavily in the other direction- so tremblingly respectful of states and statesmen, and so disrespectful, by inattention, to people's movements..."

But even so, I still found some of his positions a little simplistic. While he does a good job of humanizing the poor and the downtrodden through hundreds of quotes, he never brings the same level of detail to his discussions about the rich. My personal feeling is that the rich aren't a monolithic group (though they often behave in a more unified way than the poor)- they are still a collection of disparate individuals, families, and corporations with their own motives and interests. So when Zinn says that the rich used the pretext of nationalism to advance their own interests in World War One, I ask myself, which rich people? Was it a conscious decision by a single rich person, like the President, or a group of people, like the heads of the big corporations? Or was it a less-than-conscious choice- more an instance of lots of people in power taking advantage of opportunity to seize more power and wealth? Zinn never tells us- and he rarely uses quotes to erase this ambiguity.

Additionally, sometimes he's just a little far-out- so aggressively pacifistic or leftist that he makes stupid claims. For instance, even my dad objected to his discussion of World War 2. Here's a small taste:

What seemed clear at the time was that the United States was a democracy with certain liberties, while Germany was a dictatorship persecuting its Jewish minority, imprisoning dissidents, whatever their religion, while proclaiming the supremacy of the Nordic "race." However, blacks, looking at anti-Semitism in Germany, might not see their own situation in the U.S. as much different.

I mean, really- the way America treated the blacks was awful- but there is a world of difference between the apartheid of 1940s America and the genocide of 1940s Germany.

Those objections aside, overall Zinn accomplishes his goal of presenting the other side of American history, and convincing the reader that American government has largely been used by the rich to concentrate their wealth and power at the expense of the poor. Unfortunately, in his final chapters, Zinn doesn't offer much prescriptive advice on how to turn America in a more liberal direction of less income disparity, less war, and more civil rights. He clearly describes what his ideal America looks like- a kind of locavore anarchism, where we all live in small communities and make joint decisions through committees. But he doesn't explain how to get there, or how we could avoid the pitfalls that destroyed all the Communist countries in the past- corruption, oppression, colossal waste of resources.

The closest Zinn comes to realistic advice is reminding us that liberal social change never comes without people rising up in the streets- getting out there, protesting, and generally making noise until the rich and powerful are forced to change course. During just the last couple of months when I was reading this book, we've all seen the power of direct people's movements. Unfortunately, we only saw them in the Middle East- not in America, where more than ever, we need a more just and equitable society. The question that I'm left with is that after witnessing the plutocratic orgy of the last few years, why aren't we all out there, waving banners and demanding change?

As a reference or an additional information source, this isn't terrible (4 stars). It really does hit a lot of high points & some that other histories have left out. The writing is good. While dry, it is readable & conveys a lot of information. My copy is an old one that only goes through the Vietnam war. He has updated versions to 2003, I believe.

It is NOT a balanced view of our history & is proposed reading for schools (minus 1 star). It shouldn't be unless read with other materials as it only tells part of the story. If you want to know anything about how minority groups were mistreated, you'll find it here. While accurate, the view is so unbalanced as to become nauseating after a while (minus another star). While most historians have an axe to grind, most do it more subtly than Zinn does.

To the best of my knowledge, he doesn't gossip nor present any incorrect facts, he does present his facts in such a way as to slam our government at every turn. He does bring up some points that many other histories have glossed over, though (add one star).

For instance, in the early history of the United States, he is very careful to point out every group not represented by the Constitution, yet makes no mention of the fact that these people were not represented before the Revolution either. It's good that he brings up the point, but not so great that he leaves the impression that they obviously should have been. It wasn't obvious to the people of that time that they should have been represented. Men of property made the decisions & always had. Women, slaves & men without property didn't get a say. That they eventually did says a lot for the foundation these men laid, which Zinn carefully avoids.

So overall it is a good thing to read, but only with another history to balance it at hand.

Update 4Jun2014: It's agenda is obvious enough that it was runner up as the least credible history book in print.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/a...

Update 25Aug2014: According to this, the first slave owner in the U.S. was a black tobacco farmer. In Chapter 2, Zinn states that while 'some historians think' that blacks were 'servants' (a usage that many southerners used during the Civil War) they were probably treated differently than white indentured servants. He never mentions the information in this article:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ef2_13...
which states that the first black slave owner was a black man who was an indentured servant, worked off his debt to become a freeman & tobacco farmer who then wound up 'owning' his own indentured, black servant. The article goes on to further say there were thousands of black slave owners in the south, something I've never read about elsewhere. Interesting. People can just suck without reference to sex, color, or creed...
:(

Λιγο μαρξιστικη η προσεγγιση αλλα σαφεστατα αρκετα διαφωτιστικο για τις απαρχες του αμερικανικου κοσμου.


update: Για να μην κουραζεστε, για ολα φταιει ο καπιταλισμος. Απλα το γραφει σε 758 σελιδες για να το εμπεδωσετε.

Nobody likes to look in the mirror and see a big zit. Zinn makes us do so and a lot of people don't like that (it's not polite to point out zits). America has seen itself as perfect for a long time and we are taught that all the way from grade school through college (and every day on Fox News). People say Zinn blames America for everything. Honestly the bull shit has been so steeped the other way for so long, it forced his hand to go over the top in pointing our our flaws. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but without making people take a look at the horrors committed, the overwhelming ideology of America right or wrong will continue. Howard loves America and hates what our government has done in our name, from the beginning to the present.

The original guide to being “woke.” Lol.
Fortunately much of the information in this is now more commonly taught and not as forgotten/hidden as it once was; the middle chapters were dry as dirt to me, mostly just narrative lists of names, dates and events. The Carter and the Clinton chapters were the most revelatory to this reader. Not sure Zinn’s son was the best choice for narrator.

This book is a farce. While I think some of chapters on early American history have value, the closer the book gets to your lifetime the more you scratch your head and ask WTF. Reading Mr. Zinn's version of American history would lead you to believe that the United States of America is the most cruel, inhuman, and evil place on the planet. It has been so long since I had this one forced down my throat in high school, but what I recall most vividly was discussing the chapters on Vietnam in class. Mr. Zinn heaps praise on Ho Chi Minh as a benevolent leader who can do no wrong leading the righteous North. Now, a classmate of mine whose family just so happened to have fled Vietnam because the North Vietnamese had slaughtered a large number of his family became irate to the point he left class and would no longer read the book. Needless to say, Mr. Zinn's People's History is a selective work of history in which the author discounts any and all counter arguments which disprove his unabashedly Marxist view of the world.

NON IN NOSTRO NOME



Riscrivere la storia può far risonare echi che sono brutte e pericolose: chi dalle nostre parti vuole riscrivere la storia sono quelli che equiparano gli “allegri” ragazzi di Salò ai partigiani, le foibe alla Shoah, il confino a una villeggiatura, noi italiani alla “brava gente”, e il fascismo a un periodo storico importante e prestigioso.
Allora, per questo, invece di “riscrivere” userò l’espressione scrivere in modo nuovo. Cambiando prospettiva: la storia vista dal basso, dalla gente e non dai governi, dai poveri e non da nobili, aristocratici e borghesi. Mettendo in risalto aspetti che nella lettura storiografica consolidata rimangono marginali.
Per cui, in questo specifico caso, vuol dire sottolineare e mettere in luce il punto di vista dei nativi, degli schiavi, dei neri, di chi abitava quel continente prima che arrivasse Colombo (il genocidio compiuto dagli spagnoli, e in misura geograficamente più limitata, dai portoghesi, a cui seguirono poi gli altri popoli europei, inglesi prima e sopra tutti, portò allo sterminio del 90% della popolazione locale). Il punto di vista delle donne.
Mettere in discussione il pretesto del progresso quando si annientano interi popoli e una narrazione della storia condotta dal punto di vista dei conquistatori e dei capi della civiltà occidentale.



La prima regola esportata nelle colonie americane (perché gli Stati Uniti sono nati come tali, colonie) è quella della divisione in classi. E siccome stiamo parlando del Sei-Settecento, le classi erano essenzialmente due: i ricchi – mai più del 10% della popolazione - e i poveri.
Volendo, una sorta di terza classe era costituita dal clero.
Le colonie appaiono dunque come società di classi in lotta fra loro, un dato messo in ombra dalle storie tradizionali, che si concentrano sullo scontro esterno con l’Inghilterra e sull’unità dei coloni durante la Rivoluzione. Il paese, perciò, non è “nato libero”, ma schiavo e libero, servo e padrone, locatario e proprietario, povero e ricco.
Quando si andò costituendo anche una classe media
il gruppo dominante trovò, negli anni sessanta e settanta del Settecento, uno strumento straordinariamente utile: il linguaggio della libertà e dell’uguaglianza, che riuscì a unire un numero di bianchi sufficiente per combattere una rivoluzione contro l’Inghilterra senza porre fine alla schiavitù e alla disuguaglianza.
In sintesi - neppure troppo estrema - i cinquantacinque costituenti scrissero un testo per fondare e governare un paese in difesa del denaro, di chi lo possedeva o voleva conquistarlo.



Nella storia del mondo non c’è paese dove il razzismo sia stato così importante e duraturo come negli Stati Uniti. E il problema della “color line” esiste tuttora. Ho letto l’edizione del 2003, nel caso qualcuno si illudesse che la citazione in corsivo riguardi esclusivamente il passato.
Il traffico di schiavi coinvolse almeno cinquanta milioni di africani. Senza dimenticare che fino alla costa occidentale, fino ai porti di partenze delle navi (l’Inghilterra aveva il numero maggiore di navi e l’incontrastato dominio mondiale del mercato), erano altri africani, neri o arabi, a guidare le carovane di incatenati anche per mille chilometri percorsi a piedi, i bianchi avevano messo su un commercio alquanto lucrativo. Conveniente sia per chi organizzava il trasporto sia per chi, “utilizzatore finale”, si avvantaggiava di manodopera a buon prezzo, tenuta in schiavitù a vita, pena la morte o altro (frustate, stupro, mutilazione, marchiatura, uccisione per smembramento…).
Esistevano anche i servi, da non confondersi con gli schiavi. E quelli erano bianchi: per ripagare il debito contratto con il viaggio, restavano in servitù alcuni anni, generalmente tra i 5 e i 7 - a condizioni senz’altro migliori di quelle degli schiavi. Servi e schiavi ogni tanto si sono coalizzati per combattere il padrone bianco. Ma sono stati moti di breve durata, sia perché gli interessi erano diversi – gli uni lottavano per migliori condizioni, gli altri per la mera vita e libertà – sia perché il re o la regina mandavano prontamente centinaia di soldati ben armati a reprimere ogni insurrezione.



La mitologia che circonda i padri fondatori, i costituenti, persiste. Furono uomini saggi e giusti che cercarono di realizzare un equilibrio dei poteri? In realtà l’equilibrio non rientrava nei loro desideri, a meno che non servisse a mantenere le cose come stavano: un equilibrio, insomma, tra le forze dominanti all’epoca. Certo non volevano un equilibrio egualitario tra schiavi e padroni, nullatenenti e possidenti, indiani e bianchi. I padri fondatori ignorarono totalmente metà del popolo. La Dichiarazione d’indipendenza non le menzionava, erano assenti dalla Costituzione, invisibili nella nuova democrazia politica. Erano le donne dell’America dei primi tempi. Leggendo i soliti libri di storia, ci si può dimenticare metà della popolazione del paese. Gli esploratori erano uomini, i proprietari terreni e i mercanti erano uomini, i leader politici erano uomini, e così i militari. L’invisibilità delle donne, il fatto che siano trascurate, è un segno della loro condizione sommersa. Questa invisibilità le rendeva in qualche modo affini agli schiavi neri.



Il testo di Zinn è ricco di citazioni – riportate in un modo che può prescindere dalle note, e quindi garantire una lettura più agevole. Zinn riporta la voce degli schiavi delle colonie, dei neri liberi e dei movimenti contro la segregazione razziale del Novecento; delle donne che per prime hanno chiesto l’uguaglianza nell’Ottocento e di quelle della “seconda ondata” femminista degli anni Sessanta/Settanta del Novecento; dei nativi americani; dei movimenti contro le guerre (dalla Grande Guerra al Vietnam, alla guerra in Iraq); dei movimenti operai; dei movimenti di liberazione, resistenza e opposizione (dagli omosessuali ai movimenti degli immigrati e a Occupy). Parlano semplici cittadini e associazioni di minoranze; intellettuali e politici; poeti e scienziati; riformatori e rivoluzionari. Bianchi, neri e indiani.
Zinn racconta una storia nota in modo del tutto insolito: la storia del paese chiamato Stati Uniti d’America vista da chi ha dovuto lottare anche dopo l’indipendenza per vedere riconosciuti i proprio diritti umani e civili.
Una rivoluzione copernicana spostando l’attenzione dai vincitori ai vinti. Una contronarrazione. In pratica, una storia al contrario.

One of the textbooks used during my third year in Language and Culture studies, offering unusual vistas on the History of the United States from early native American civilization to the 2000 election and the war on Terrorism. I remember that then, the author's keen enthusiasm and avowed involvement in furthering his views on the object of study stroke me as notably biased, being much more overt than it is in many other history books, that is.


Chapter 1 - "Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress"
Chapter 2 - "Drawing the Color Line"
Chapter 3 - "Persons of Mean and Vile Condition"
Chapter 4 - "Tyranny Is Tyranny"
Chapter 5 - "A Kind of Revolution"
Chapter 6 - "The Intimately Oppressed"
Chapter 7 - "As Long As Grass Grows or Water Runs"
Chapter 8 - "We Take Nothing by Conquest, Thank God"
Chapter 9 - "Slavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom"
Chapter 10 - "The Other Civil War"
Chapter 11 - "Robber Barons and Rebels"
Chapter 12 - "The Empire and the People"
Chapter 13 - "The Socialist Challenge"
Chapter 14 - "War Is the Health of the State"
Chapter 15 - "Self-Help in Hard Times"
Chapter 16 - "A People's War?"
Chapter 17 - "'Or Does It Explode?'"
Chapter 18 - "The Impossible Victory: Vietnam"
Chapter 19 - "Surprises"
Chapter 20 - "The Seventies: Under Control?"
Chapter 21 - "Carter-Reagan-Bush: The Bipartisan Consensus"
Chapter 22 - "The Unreported Resistance"
Chapter 23 - "The Coming Revolt of the Guards"
Chapter 24 - "The Clinton Presidency"
Chapter 25 - "The 2000 Election and the 'War On Terrorism'"

This is one of the most eye-opening books I have ever read. The late Howard Zinn takes off the filters with which American history is taught in schools and takes an unflinching look at how the US has not been the benevolent protector of democracy that propaganda would like us to believe. Not that the founding principles were wrong - they were ideal then and with some modifications re slavery and women's rights are still relevant today - but American domestic and foreign policy has been held hostage by Big Capital and Old Money for over two centuries. It should be made essential reading for high school seniors and college freshmen to avoid the kind of knee-jerk reactionism that resulted in Drumpf's election in 2016. The US is not a perfect country and has its share blood on its hands and conscience and ignoring that ensures that we will repeat the same errors resulting in the deaths of innocent people again and again. An absolutely critical read.

Especially in the current hagiography of praising America's past as the if there was some lost utopia to which Drumpf, Inc wants to return to "Make America Great Again", Zinn's open-eyed, factual, and documented history reveals that this is all pure right-wing propaganda. All corporate and imperialistic entities commit atrocities in order to rise and maintain power, and the US is no exception to that. Yes, there is an ideal of freedom but it is one that has to be fought for generation after generation or it will be lost forever - THAT is what Zinn's book is all about and why it is important now!

The news just gets worse every day and the truth ever more elusive. Zinn's book remains a critical assessment of American history and a reminder that all of our rights from the Constitution to Social Security to Civil Rights to the Great Society were paid for with blood and sweat and must be preserved despite the constant attacks by Drumpf and his Republican cronies.