People's History Of The US?

[Vendetta]

Is it a good read (as a history book)?

[Sendo]

fuck yeah. Once you read the first page you won't be able to stop reading. It's long but good. The only part of USA history it leaves out is stupid shit like Presidents' names and the love-fest over battle reports

(ex. "And then the strong-willed Patton grabbed his men and heroically charged the Huns..." okay, you know what I mean. Admittedly Che's bio by Jon Lee Anderson goes into battle details but they it's actually interesting and truthful)

Anyhow, Howard Zinn is a brilliant author and his "call to arms" at the end really speaks to the everyman and especially Americans. Not the white power structure, but the American love of home and passion. His book is great for lefties, especially non-US ones. It shows interesting bits like how common US people did not kill off the Indians (Well, in New England yes, but Dixie and the West were largely cleared by government forces. Eventually it became all -out war in the west. But the major anti-Indian campaigns were ordered by presidents. I should also qualify by saying the Indians are not completely gone yet and we must not just move on. It is important to resist thinking of them as "extinct".) It shows the hypocrisy of the Civil War (Lincoln's racism, Northern ghettos, total war, racist abolitionists who only wanted to abolish slavery so as to send all Negros to Africa) and how without the Civil War there was a good chance of white farmhands and black slaves rising up together and starting a revolution. It shows how the US didn't NEED a strong central govt. People like Sam Adams and Madison SAID we needed a strong central govt. It shows how strong the Populist movement was once, how violent our protests and strikes used to be (we need to remember those days). It also brings up important African-Americans in our history. And not just a watered down MLK or the fucking peanut butter guy (seriously, why the fuck is he part of Black History Month? He should be incorporated into regular Culinary history like that Saratogian who invented potato chips.)

When I (hopefully) am teaching history in a couple years and if I'm doing American history it'll be on my curriculum for sure. No tool is better for unlearning the spoon-fed BS of Simon & Schuster, Prenctice Hall, and all their ilk.

[Led Zeppelin]

Yes, though the ending is a bit boring.

[Norseman]

It's a great book. You can read it online for free, and I recommend that you do.

[which doctor]

Apparently they made a movie loosely based on it. I think I read it in the Chicago Reader or something but I forgot the name.

[rocker935]

Yeh, this is a killer book, you should definitely read it.

[Pawn Power]

Yes. All American students should read it!

[trivas7]

Howard Zinn knows his stuff. Excellent. :thumbup1:

[Red October]

As other posters have said, it's a fantastic history. I read it many years ago and I think it's the book that really set me towards becoming a leftist. It gives a kick in the ass to all the US history you learn in school. If you want to know your shit about American history, you need to read it.

[JimmyJazz]

http://www.historyisaweapon.com/zinnapeopleshistory.html

It makes a decent reference too, when you are interested in a specific period of history just read Zinn's chapter on it real quick for a few things that might get left out of other history books. Unfortunately he doesn't use citations, but when he names names then it's easy enough to check up on him.


it's the book that really set me towards becoming a leftist.

me too.

[RebelDog]

A Peoples History is a triumph. It views US history through its driving perspective of class warfare. This makes it poles apart from any mainstream history textbook full of bourgeois bollocks. I think it is an essential read for anyone wishing to see how historical materialism actually applies when history is written using it as a tool. Brilliant.

[Sendo]

I will say, unfortunately, his analysis of the some the newer currents like environmentalism is glossed over pretty quickly. For any one looking for better analysis on that I recommend James O'Connor's Natural Causes which adds class character, community democracy, and third world development to environmental and health issues. In Zinn's speeches he will give attention to the flowering of American culture that's been going on since the 1960s, but his written tapers off by the end of the 1960s. His speeches are great for motivation and giving context, but People's History shines for its treatment of Amerindians, African-Americans, women, labor, anti-war movements.

Part of what is nice about Zinn is that he less prolific than others and this book (updated edition, of course) can put all of his views in one book. And unlike Chomsky he doesn't go in long, roundabout ways to get to his points. Very accessible.

[Chapaev]

"People's History" is a must-read for any student. Zinn effectively debunks many of the myths of U.S history. He speaks from the perspective of oppressed classes and nations.

On some points, however, Zinn's approach is unsound. His depiction of the indigenous peoples who were still stuck in the primitive communal system encountered by Columbus is too utopian. Columbus' discovery of America is to be praised for giving rise to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society.

Although Abraham Lincoln is recognized by Marxists to have been an exceptional bourgeois revolutionary, Zinn's analysis of his legacy is too negative. As Lenin noted, the Civil War in the United States had a very great progressive and revolutionary significance in world history.

For a genuine Marxist-Leninist analysis of United States history, I recommend "History of the USA Since World War I" by Yazkov and Sivachyov. It is available online (http://leninist.biz/en/1976/HUWWI500/index.html)