This should be recommended reading for American history classes. Although I disagree with some of his conclusions, Zinn researched information that most historians don't bother with. It is indispensable as a source on American history and no library on the the subject would be complete without it.

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'"

"It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart." Thus famously said Anne Frank. I have lived my life clinging similarly to this idea. Howard Zinn's magnificent book makes it difficult. I choose not to shy away from hard or inconvenient truths. But Zinn reveals so many of them, there is such an onslaught of greed and racism and cruelty and deliberate inhumanity on display throughout American history in this unprettied-up, clear-eyed focus on the facts behind American "glory" that I often had a hard time returning to the book. The divisions, the hatred, the false patriotism, the undisguised greed, the twisting of facts that seem to define our current era are no new propositions. They've been with us since before the founding of the nation. But history, usually, is written by the winners, and winners rarely want the world to know what they were capable of in order to win. Zinn set out to write a history of America not from the perspective of the powerful, but from that of the defeated, the poor, the downtrodden, those discriminated against, and, often, the losers in centuries of conflict and ostensible progress. I think Zinn loves America as I do. But I think he, as I, have no interest in a fairy-tale version of our history where goodness and decency has always triumphed. Saint Paul said, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." Freedom does not come from being suckered by pretty lies and distortions. Mankind is a magnificent entity, but it is also a cruel, vindictive, and greedy entity, as well, and history is shaped far more drastically by these qualities than by man's better angels. Zinn rips the blinders off. It's not pretty, but it is an absolutely necessary viewpoint if we are to know who we are and what we stand for. This book is a masterpiece of history, of journalism, and of writing.

gotta love how the objections to this text are that it's biased or that it's for 'America haters.' goodness, neither objection should be permitted, except respectively for the subliterate or the fascistic.

if on the one hand the preference is for US history texts entitled 'America is Great!' or 'Triumph of America," it is difficult to see how the former objection makes any sense.

if on the other the allegation is not that author is incorrect, it is hard to fathom how the latter objection could be made.

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.

The winners write the history. Howard Zinn writes what happened to the other guy. The chapters on the civil rights movement were most engrossing.

History as it's told in our high school history textbooks is history that focuses on American leaders, whether political, military, or business. Zinn argues convincingly that we need also to see history as it happened to "the people," and that this perspective is by no means synonymous with that of America's elites. In fact, the official line in America's history and politics has been that America is basically one big middle class. Certainly, America long had a larger middle class than most of the rest of the world, but as Zinn points out, we are "a middle class society governed for the most part by its upper classes." And what we see time after time (as in the present day) is that those who govern us have worked consistently for their own class first and for the country-as-a-whole second.

Zinn takes a hard look at the slaughter of the native Americans, at the exploitation of blacks and poor whites, at the alliance between government and business interests, at the struggles for the abolition of slavery, for labor rights, for civil rights, for women's rights... and over and over we see politicians taking action, passing and enforcing legislation only when popular movements force them to do so. Not simply when the electorate that voted them into office wants it, but when the people demand it in ways that cannot be easily ignored (as the polls more or less can when both parties are so similar on many basic issues). Voting, in fact, can be seen as consitently as a device for making people feel empowered while changing little.

I'll let Zinn speak for himself a bit.

“My viewpoint, in telling the story of the United States, is different: that we must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.”

Zinn puts himself consistently on the side of "the people," inasmuch as there can be said to be such a group--certainly it's not a unified group, and Zinn recognizes this. Still, Zinn would argue, the diversity represented by "the people" have more in common with one another (as much as they have been prevented from seeing it) than they do with the elites who run the country.

Fair warning: it's a long read, and pretty dense. Definitely not what we used to call "drunk-on-the-beach reading." In fact, if you want to read a book that shares some insights with this book without the exhaustive focus, you might start with James Loewen's _Lies My Teacher Told Me_. Really, these are two books that should be read by anyone who wants to understand our country and its history. If it's true that "those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat it," then I think a necessary corollary is that "those who don't know the truth about history are doomed to repeat it."

An indispensable history, told with dedication and compassion. The book truly lives up to its title: it is genuinely a people's history, told from the standpoint of the masses, pulling together the innumerable threads of struggle - indigenous, African, Latino, immigrant, unemployed, low-paid, women, gay - into a vision of a society that works for ordinary people, where the profiteers no longer pull the strings, where dignified work and social equality take the place of criminal war and severe inequality.

I disagree with Zinn on a few issues, particularly his somewhat grumpy and terse criticism of the various socialist experiments of the 20th century, which Zinn seems to dismiss as being no better than US free market fundamentalism. But I guess you have to expect a few differences of opinion in a 700-page history book. Overall "A People's History of the United States" really is an outstanding, must-read book.

Actually, if you're even somewhat familiar with American History (and I'm not talking about what you learned in your politically correct high school readers, even though in recent years more of the 'bad stuff' is leaking out to our high school students), there's nothing new here. So why are so many upset by Zinn? Most say they are bothered by Zinn's subjectivity (but who cares? after all, it's his book) and what some say is his "whining" tone. Hey, this will help you build your critical thinking skills and delaing with the reality of bias (never, ever read just one book on complex issues to get it all, or at least most of the true picture) And if he does focus excessively on the rich as creators and cause of all negatives historically, well, he's not too far off (for more, read The End of Money and The Future of Civilization by Thomas H. Greco). But there certainly are positives within most existing negatives (for more read A Patriots History of the United States).

But back to all the people whining about Zinn's whining (yeah, I know, funny, huh? ;o)What frequently happens is that people respond emotionally and within that emotion analyze incorrectly, therefore, missing the mark and attacking the author (not always, but often). What is most likely affecting most people is an initial exposure to long-covered truths, something Zinn has nothing to do with. And if you love your country and you're getting pummeled by constant negatives about that country, well . . . from that emotional state you shoot missing the mark.

But there's nothing new here, and you don't have to take my word. If you're looking for different perspectives on the same material, try this short list:

Revisiting America: Readings in Race, Culture, and Conflict; Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong; and to add to the fire, Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance (yes, the one Hugo Chavez shot to the top of the bestsellers list); Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy; What We Say Goes: Conversations on U.S. Power in a Changing World; ad infinitum. Basically anything Chomsky.

As for the conservative reading list, there's . . . ahhhh . . . wait a tic? I don't see anything beyond the one book mentioned above. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Let me get on the phone to McCain. I'll be right back.

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.

Pick up a history book. Any topic. Most likely, it's written by a white Anglo-Saxon Christian male. Almost certainly, it's a binary narrative with some heroic protagonists and unlikeable antagonists. There will be some harping on the jaded trope of civilizational progress wherein things are apparently getting better and people are getting more enlightened. There will be a subtle implication that some societies are farther along this march towards progress than others, and some societies have a lot of catching-up to do. A conventional history book lights a small flame but casts a large shadow; in talking about a few characters who apparently steer the wheels of history, it leaves out entire social, racial and economic groups who constitute the spokes of that wheel.

Howard Zinn focuses on the people whose version of history is less heroic, more prosaic. It talks about the Native Americans who were systematically deracinated and exterminated while conventional history serenades the expanding “frontier” of an incipient America. It talks about the black plantation workers, the womb of whose drudgery bore the embryo of early capitalism. It talks about the struggles of women against patriarchy - that ethereal, overbearing association of men divergent in class-color-religion, united in misogyny. It talks about the countries devastated by America’s war on communism and terrorism. America’s supposedly free media may not have told them this, but the USA and its sponsored regimes have killed more people in the name of freedom and democracy than the atrocities of Communist dictators and Jihadists combined. I know, because my own country Bangladesh suffered a genocide of 3 million people and the rape of a quarter million women in the hands of Pakistan, which transpired under the auspices of the Nixon – Kissinger duo. The US government tried to stifle our struggle for freedom because we voted a left-leaning party to power, and it failed. American media at least did us the courtesy of acknowledging our genocide. Other direct victims of America – Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, El Salvador and South American nations with puppet military dictators – were not so lucky.


We cannot undo the sins of our fathers, nor should we have them hung over our heads. But we mature as citizens of the modern world when we brush aside the false veneer of glory and behold history in its agony.

This was an interesting book to read. Howard Zinn chronicles US history from 1492 to present. What makes it interesting is Zinn's decision to write about history largely from the perspective of regular folks. I learned about different uprisings, protests, resistance to government and civil rights movement. The book is dominated by examples of social and economic inequality in the US. It exposes the dark side of the American history, stuff they don't (or didn't) teach you in school. Overall, I enjoyed reading this hefty tome and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to improve on their previous knowledge of American history.