Customer Reviews

The People Speak CD

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Very interesting book, the variety of people is wonderful and well thought out. It takes someone special to look at their own country and not shy away from painful parts of our history. The only way to move forward is to learn from the real past not the rosy schoolbook history that been sanitized.

The Frederick Douglass speech read by James Earl Jones alone is worth the purchase. The People Speak is a great collection of speeches and words (read by others) of the men and woman throughout our history who fought for basic freedom and dignity. An inspired record of community and the power of remembering our past.

I was struck by how much I like these performances. Most of the readers do such a good job dramatizing speeches, letters and experts. It really is as if you are there listening to the original speaker and can't help but laugh, cheer, get angry, and sad.

Amazon lists this as both abridged and unabridged. On the back of the disc says unabridged. But you must know that only excerpts are performed. So don't think that you are going to hear a dramatization of the entire "Grassroots" speech by Malcolm X.

Get the book "The People Speak" too for when you want to read along and listen at the same time.

A short, quick, poignant read written by people from across the span of American history - though reads like something written yesterday. Are American's learning anything from our past?

The People Speak was a gift after seeing it in film. Any time a writer professes to the people their view in a soap-box style of speaking or getting attention has room for critics and different view points. This points the fundamentals and gets everyone in their face to consider what is going on around them they may seem to not notice they are not noticing...slavery, tax markets slashing etc and he tells you how it is breaking down borders and meanings to all walks of life...very good read...

The content and performances are excellent. Unfortunately, the index just gives names, and not the dates or incidents that these speeches or documents were created for. "Voices of a People's History of the US" has an index that gives all of that information.

The excerpt from the Spanish priest on Santo Domingo does not contain the most powerful passage that I've heard read. It concerns the execution of an Indian chief who when asked if he wanted to convert to Christianity before his execution, asked if all Christians went to heaven. Told they did, he said he'd rather go to the other place.

Having watched Zinn's documentary, "The People Speak," my main problem is that while everything he says is technically true, he cherry picks facts and leaves out those which either add complexity to or radically change the moral standing of the historical figures he criticizes.

The first example of this in his documentary is when he told of how Columbus and his men treated the natives on that Caribbean island. Zinn gave all the gruesome details of the torture they suffered at the hands of Columbus and reported that the population dropped from 3 million to 200. He left out the part where at least 90% of these fatalities were due to small pox which the Europeans brought unwittingly to America. While this doesn't justify Columbus' mistreatment of the natives, it goes to show that Columbus wasn't exactly practicing a systematic genocide.

Another example of this is the part where Zinn listed a few of our founding fathers who were against the creation of the Bill of Rights. Again, he is correct, but he implied that these founding fathers were against the freedoms listed in that document. However, contrary to what he wants us to think, these men were against the Bill of Rights for fear that our rights would be limited to those listed and there would be loopholes which would allow the government to find new ways to oppress people. Anyone who is familiar with the Bill of Rights would know that this issue was resolved with the 9th amendment which protected those rights not listed.

My advice to those who follow Zinn is to take everything he says with complete skepticism. While his facts as far, as I can tell, are accurate, he loves to leave out information which could get in the way of his agenda making America seem to be the land of Satan. Zinners need to change their ways and reevaluate the basis of their views of American history by revisiting their high school level textbooks.