A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present (Perennial Classics) [Paperback]

Howard Zinn (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Consistently lauded for its lively, readable prose, this revised and updated edition of A People's History of the United States turns traditional textbook history on its head. Howard Zinn infuses the often-submerged voices of blacks, women, American Indians, war resisters, and poor laborers of all nationalities into this thorough narrative that spans American history from Christopher Columbus's arrival to an afterword on the Clinton presidency.

Addressing his trademark reversals of perspective, Zinn--a teacher, historian, and social activist for more than 20 years--explains, "My point is not that we must, in telling history, accuse, judge, condemn Columbus in absentia. It is too late for that; it would be a useless scholarly exercise in morality. But the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress (Hiroshima and Vietnam, to save Western civilization; Kronstadt and Hungary, to save socialism; nuclear proliferation, to save us all)--that is still with us. One reason these atrocities are still with us is that we have learned to bury them in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth."

If your last experience of American history was brought to you by junior high school textbooks--or even if you're a specialist--get ready for the other side of stories you may not even have heard. With its vivid descriptions of rarely noted events, A People's History of the United States is required reading for anyone who wants to take a fresh look at the rich, rocky history of America. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

According to this classic of revisionist American history, narratives of national unity and progress are a smoke screen disguising the ceaseless conflict between elites and the masses whom they oppress and exploit. Historian Zinn sides with the latter group in chronicling Indians' struggle against Europeans, blacks' struggle against racism, women's struggle against patriarchy, and workers' struggle against capitalists. First published in 1980, the volume sums up decades of post-war scholarship into a definitive statement of leftist, multicultural, anti-imperialist historiography. This edition updates that project with new chapters on the Clinton and Bush presidencies, which deplore Clinton's pro-business agenda, celebrate the 1999 Seattle anti-globalization protests and apologize for previous editions' slighting of the struggles of Latinos and gays. Zinn's work is an vital corrective to triumphalist accounts, but his uncompromising radicalism shades, at times, into cynicism. Zinn views the Bill of Rights, universal suffrage, affirmative action and collective bargaining not as fundamental (albeit imperfect) extensions of freedom, but as tactical concessions by monied elites to defuse and contain more revolutionary impulses; voting, in fact, is but the most insidious of the "controls." It's too bad that Zinn dismisses two centuries of talk about "patriotism, democracy, national interest" as mere "slogans" and "pretense," because the history he recounts is in large part the effort of downtrodden people to claim these ideals for their own.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 752 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (April 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060528370
• ISBN-13: 978-0060528379
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (778 customer reviews)
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #11,639 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

  #15 in	Books > Nonfiction > Government > Democracy
  #81 in	Books > Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Political Science > Political Doctrines

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

335 of 367 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A teacher of American History's POV, February 1, 2000

By	M. Faust "TGIF (Teach Government In Fairfax)" (Oakton, Virginia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: A People's History of the United States: 1492 to the Present (Hardcover)

For several years of the last decade, I taught Advanced Placement U.S. History at a high school in northern Virginia. When I began the course, Zinn had already been assigned by my predecessor, and I needed a counterpoint to the main text (Bailey and Kennedy's bombastic, traditionalist, and short-on-social history "Pageant of the American Nation"). Zinn's deftly written book provided a fortunate antithesis to the "march of presidents and industrial titans" approach to American history. I found many chapters of this book to be such excellent stimulants to class discussions that I extended their use into my non-AP U.S. history classes, where students, many of whom could not otherwise have cared less about history, found themselves reading an interesting and provocative historian for the first time in their lives. Many of the best discussions I ever had with my classes (both AP and "regular") began with assigned chapters from Zinn. From there, it was an easy step to move on to the idea of historiography (the history of how history has been interpreted) and to decoupling my students from thinking of the textbook as revealed wisdom.

Yes, this book has its faults, as many of the previous reviews point out. It is very left-leaning. It does sometimes omit factual points that do not support its line of argument. It does sometimes verge on equating the misdeeds of American leaders with the horrific malevolence of the leaders of totalitarian states. It does romanticize its heroes.

For all that, though, this book is an excellent introduction to U.S. history if read as a contrasting voice to more traditional narratives. It is a fine and vigorous antidote to the excessively reverent tone of many high school textbooks. It conveys a sense of moral passion that is often lacking in these texts, which are typically take great pains to offend no one, particularly regarding events within living memory. Not all contemporary texts are this bloodlessly terrible, but many are. One of the best things about Zinn's histories is that he leaves in the drama that the standard texts insist on draining out.

"A People's History" begins with a bold thesis, and keeps it at center stage--namely, that those with power and wealth consistently extend it to others only when the situation has reached the level of deep crisis, and only with the minimum and uppermost fraction of the discontended needed to co-opt them and defeat the dissent of the remainder, often also turning otherwise natural allies into antagonistic contenders for "table scraps" from the banquet in the process. And as Zinn argues repeatedly, this grudging and incomplete inclusion, made reality by the courage and convictions of average men and women, has been the engine that has driven most if not all extentions of both liberty and equality in U.S. history, and that this is a continuing and unfinished process, awaiting future generations of idealists possessing the courage of their own convictions. I admire this book (and this author) for inculcating this idea among young readers.

For young adults who have an interest in U.S. history, or for parents who wish to engage their teen's interest in history, this book is a great place to start. It also might be the start of a few conversations at home about justice, fairness, equality, morality, the probity of leaders, etc. Since it argues more from a passion for justice and equality, a sense of burning indignation, and a highly debatable point of view, those desiring balance should pair it with something less withering in its assessment toward the history of the American state. This is an excellent history for the newly interested, or for those readers looking for an alternative perspective.

592 of 702 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Raises important questions, terrible scholarship, January 5, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present (Paperback)

THE GOOD: Professor Zinn raises important questions that test our long held assumptions about American history, and for this--the questions--the book should be read and discussed vigorously. The book is also very readible, with a flowing, yet serious style.

THE BAD: Unfortunately, the book suffers from two fatal flaws, and for this reason does not belong in a classroom (college or otherwise). First, Zinn fails to cite adequately his sources (no footnotes or endnotes), leaving the reader with only a vague sense of his source material. This is particularly unacceptable for a work that admits to be controversial. His excuse, in the preface, that the footnotes would be too voluminous, is lame at best. Witness Pulitzer winning historian McCullough's use of sources in his much acclaimed JOHN ADAMS.

Second, in presenting his evidence, Zinn fails to quantify meaningfully the culpability of those historical figures he wishes to evaluate from the 'people's' perspective, nor does he even discuss the limitations or challenges posed by the evidence, nor does he sufficiently discuss his methodology used for reaching his conclusions. Mostly, he simply cites judgments made in secondary sources. Any college student can do that, and we should expect more from a Harvard professor.

For instance, in his chapter on Columbus, he indicates that two years after Columbus landed on Hispanola the native Arawak population had nearly all died. He also cites evidence of some gratuitously harsh treatment by the Spanish-- but he does not really indicate the degree to which these events were isolated or the norm. Specifically: did the Arawaks perish as a result of systematic slaughter or from disease transmitted from Spanish soldiers? If only, say, 20% were slaughtered and the rest died from disease, our moral judgments would be different than if the case were reversed. This historical method characterizes his use of examples throughout the book: anecdotal pieces without proper context. To the extent Zinn fails to quantify or even discuss the problems of quantification (however crudely) he is really just putting on a slight of hand. He invites the unsuspecting (or unsophisticated) reader to adopt inferences that might not be warranted or which the reader's emotions might have predisposed her.

Hence, though well written and fascinating for the questions it raises, the book fails to make its case stick and can be misleading. Read it, but with extreme caution, and try to recognize the slights of hand for what they are. It's a pity: his inquiry is important, but his method undermines his case.

51 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good critic sense, mediocre history, October 5, 2003

By	Fabio (Milan, Italy, EU) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present (Perennial Classics) (Paperback)

First of all I'm not american and I lack what Zinn often criticizes, a classic american hero-history, so my opinion on this book could be slightly different from an usual american reader review.
One of the reasons I bought A People's History is simply because I received a typical european education very focused on every aspect of main euro countries, say Western ones, with scarce notions about american history; for instance I was taught about the Revolution and the Intervention during the WorldWarII but not much more, and I was curious to learn something more specific especially about the epic figures of the Presidents and the Supreme Court, so I bounced on this book with absolute no clue about Zinn's political view.
I have just finished to read the 2003 edition, and this is what I think about this huge book,
Pros:
1)If you don't feel shocked and indignated by criticizing classic american heroes such as the Founding Fathers, Lincoln, etc or by talking openly especially about their mistakes and their bad decisions or policies, the book is indeed a good approach to build a true critic sense, for it makes you ask important questions and seek difficult answers, and this is crucial in history teaching. This is indeed important I repeat.
Cons:
2)Zinn tried to write in a novelist-style, concentrating on a topic and climating from the least to the most important things to say about, while commenting and drawing consequences, but at the same time forgetting completely about the time-line stream, the thing that probably most gives sense to history itself.
This can lead to a very frustrating reading, when you try to find out what happens before and what next, but you simply can't because here he talks about 1887, a line below about 1900, five lines below about 1870 and so on.
3)There are topics very well described along with most incomplete references, last ones especially about the 'rich and powerful' facts, who anyway still remain facts. So if you don't have a classic american education it's sometimes difficult to understand what's going on because everything's focused only and always on the same topics. Along with this you can't find a single note or precise account especially about statistics and statements, so you can never be sure if you can buy what Zinn says.
4)The last chapters of the book tend to fall either in utopistic dreams or melanconic complaining, and Zinn never gives a valid and possible alternative choice; I'll give you just an example: you can't criticize Clinton's policy of reducing the deficit if you omit what are the consequences in the long run of an increasing deficit caused by social either military expenses; it's not so easy as Zinn often says to spend money on social programs and yet promoting an economic growth while creating new jobs! In matter of fact, even if you can't accept this on a political or moral point of view, the economy grows and creates jobs as long as the corporations earn money so they can later invest.

In conclusion I can say I was disappointed from the book from a pure technical historic approach, but I consider anyway the book excellent, and I really mean it, to develop an independent and critic mentality, for actual national american media don't help in this, nor the history class the way is done in american schools, all this not depending on which political party you believe in.

My rating: 3 stars, good but not too much, don't make the mistake neither to be too much impressed nor to consider it junk