Professor Zinn’s focus is America, however, the story of elite rule and control can be told and retold the world over. I think it was Claude Levi-Strauss who noted these conditions have existed since the dawn of civilization, ever since our first ancestor consented to be governed – or maybe that consent came at the point of a spear and true consent never occurred. This raises a basic question, are there better operating models? The answer is not clear – have a look at the histories of Russia, China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Nigeria, Western Europe, Japan, etc.

Can we improve our lot? Undoubtedly, yes. Is that likely to happen? I doubt it. Why? Because commercial and political interests operate through self-reinforcing gravitational laws that are difficult to fathom in the moment and nearly impossible to override; further, they are dynamic, remorselessly consuming their own, if necessary. While I cannot point to hard data, it seems that with time, our population has become ever more inured to the status quo and that the era of mass strikes and large protests have passed. Yes, a few thousand can turn out to riot on occasion – this is different from the mass protests known to history, where the heartbeat of society marched in the streets and on more than one day. Our collective weaknesses are now well understood and readily available for manipulation by our elites who seek to influence us to further their agendas. I’m hard pressed to see how this system changes for the better.

Professor Zinn’s work is a check on the notion of American democracy, a call to see this country for what it really is, a land graced with abundant natural resources, long governed and influenced by a narrow, corridor of self-interested elites. Professor Zinn’s effort is not new – most of his observations can be found embedded in good, recent histories of our country. His thematic treatment is helpful for the record, telling the 'other side' of the story, though he wanders a bit in his commentary following Vietnam. I did note a few omissions. For example, he did not mention the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 nor the Wilmington massacre of 1898. I guess he had to make choices for readability, for the list of American civil disturbances is long indeed.

This work is also a reminder of what nasty folk we are – not Americans per se, rather humans as a whole. America is surely exceptional, but not alone, in its record of atrocities, subjugations, genocides, and repressions – we can find plenty of sad examples the world over. Common to most tales are various controlling elites using a smörgåsbord of patriotic, religious, military, racist and economic narratives to portray their appalling behavior as something emotionally appealing, all for empowerment and profit.

The events at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 caused me to dwell on the difference in the reaction to revolutionary and reactionary mobs through history, especially since Professor Zinn focused so much of this book on incidents that were met with violence. Some commentators noted that if the mob were a group of minorities protesting at the Capitol, they would have been met with far greater force than the presidentially-inspired madness of that recent day, which, I think, clouds the issue. History tells us that forces acting in the interest of the established order – even if that established order is newly created, such as the Bolsheviks in October 1917 – are met with much more accommodating force than those acting with revolutionary spirit. See the Central American death squads, the paramilitary organizations throughout South America in the past century, the Freikorps in Germany post-WWI, the various strike-breaking agencies used in this country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and on and on. Yes, racism underlies police conduct throughout this country, however, in this one case, the storming of the Capitol, I think a better comparison is to the asymmetrical reactions throughout history when comparing reactionary and revolutionary actions.

Near the end of this volume, Professor Zinn does make some modest, community-orientated proposals for collective improvement. Those words struck me as pleasant but unworkable in the face of the established order. If the American regime is corrupt to the core, then what is the viable alternative? Who has a better model? The answer, I suspect, is no one because of that darkness that lurks in our collective soul. To suggest some kind of national community consciousness, one where our harmful behaviors are shackled is Pollyannish, if not downright impossible.

It would take a book to properly dissect Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, whose popularity belies its wretched vacuousness. At his best, Zinn gives voices to labor leaders, civil rights activists, feminists and pacifists whose contributions to American history and culture are habitually ignored; also his colorful depictions of strikes, protests and massacres are worthwhile. Far more often, he warps history into an unchanging monolith of Elites oppressing or killing everyone else. His analyses are less nuanced, sophisticated or credible than a Politburo comic strip: Native Americans as Utopian proto-Bolsheviks until ravaged by savage European capitalists; the American Revolution as an elite conspiracy to co-opt a Jacobin-style class uprising; the Civil War waged less to end slavery or preserve the Union than to crush immigrants and labor unions (!?!); progressive politicians from Lincoln through FDR and LBJ as corporate frauds; Communist China, Cuba and Vietnam as genuine people’s democracies (unlike capitalist Amerikkka!); Kennedy’s biggest crime being not his Civil Rights ambivalence or foreign adventurism, but tax cuts; Vietnam as scheme to plunder Indochina’s tin and rubber; multiple chapters blathering about the Trilateral Commission like an Alex Jones screed; and, most unwittingly damning, protest movements as, simultaneously, inexorable forces of righteous resistance and powerless dupes easily defeated, co-opted and misled by Rich White Men. The WWII chapter is particularly mendacious, criticizing FDR for not entering the war sooner, then attacking him for (allegedly) provoking Japan into bombing Pearl Harbor; praising Communists for opposing American intervention while ignoring their endorsement of the Hitler-Stalin Pact (or mentioning the actual fascists, rather than Imaginary Zinn Fascists, who dominated America First); and naturally, claiming the US is no better than Germany because Jim Crow and Hiroshima. This is a terrible, terrible book that ought to offend anyone who knows anything about history; sadly, because it confirms some individuals' biases, it will remain widely read and headache-inducingly influential.