A People’s History of the United States
This book by Howard Zinn is packed with fascinating information. If you want to know what really happened — blemishes and all — this book offers an unabridged no-holds-barred history of our country, starting in 1492.
The only reason I even know about the book is because of a column by neocon spewbag Dennis Prager. He was ranting and foaming at the mouth about it in this column which appeared in our local paper. Anyone who reads this evil book will be “manipulated into believing that America is a bad country, certainly no better than others.” He describes the book as “essentially a proctologist’s view of American history.”
I assume the website doesn’t contain the entire book, but there are some huge excerpts here. Columbus’ first encounter with Native Americans (it wasn’t pretty); a chilling description of the first slave ship unloading its cargo at Jamestown in 1619; the “other civil war” in the early 1800s; new insights into our Vietnam invasion. There are 24 chapters in all.
If you don’t purchase the book, bookmarking the website is the next best thing.
I already knew a lot of this information from reading Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen. This is an excellent world history book. It’s probably less detailed about American history than the Howard Zinn book since it’s more of a world overview. Both books are excellent antidotes to the whitewashed sanitized “history” we’ve all been taught.
I’ve never understood why it’s supposed to be “negative” or “anti-American” to teach history the way it really happened, warts and all. Every country — including this one — has a history of violence, war and unimaginable cruelty. What’s the purpose of suppressing this information? It seems pointless to take a vibrant living multi-layered history and condense it into a squeaky-clean feelgood Leave It To Beaver episode.
These two books are a big 180 from the condensed simplified “America to the rescue!” tripe we all studied in school. And we have the same contrast with today’s current news coverage. Listen to a scripted sanitized story on the evening news. Then check out the same story on one of the “alternative” news websites, or a foreign news source. Even in Canada and Europe, their coverage of American issues is much more complete and objective than anything you’ll get from our own mainstream “media.”
Generations from now when historians are writing about this era, what will they write? The bland sterile news we’re getting today from the mainstream media is probably what future generations will read in their “official” history textbooks. Hopefully there will also be a few authors like Howard Zinn and James Loewen who will tell what really happened.
March 18th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
The one by Howard Zinn is going to be my next read. Thank you much for pointing it out. Another of his books looks good too, so it’s on my list. “manipulated into believing”- Sad how telling the truth is considered manipulative.
March 18th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
I read it quite a long time ago. I think it’s a good balancer. As he points out in the beginning, typical American history books give you America, warts and all, including genocide of the natives, but does so almost as a side issue. They’re written, often, especially older histories of the country, from the standpoint of the victors: white men. Zinn set out to right history from the perspective of the losers: everyone else: native Americans, blacks, women, etc.
Like all history writing, it has been criticized — and not just by cranky “America: love it or leave it” types but bona fide historians — but I’m not nearly strong enough in the academic minutia of American history to decide between Zinn and his critics — his legitimate historian critics, not the typical angry conservative blogger.
It’s worth a read but I wouldn’t necessarily say that Zinn’s history is “the way it really was” while other histories aren’t. It’s a matter of point of view. Zinn takes a point of view not normally taken in history writing so I found it interesting. I mean, it’s not like we never learned that we screwed over the natives or that the effect of Europeans on the natives wasn’t devastating. Anyway, I didn’t find anything in Zinns book to be totally unfamiliar in general outline or anything in it to be just glaringly untrue — but then again, I’m not enough of a historian to necessarily know one way or another.
March 18th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Oh, and I wouldn’t call Zinns history “more complete”, either, well, not more complete than serious American histories I’ve read, not even more complete than one volume overviews of American history from 1492 to the present. Most histories attempt to hit all of what the authors view as the important persons and conflicts, military and political. Zinn, on the other hand, spent a lot of ink on certain points in time and how the underdog in the fight fared but also skips large chunks of history as apparently not all that interesting to him. So, for those points in American history that he deals with, he IS more detailed but there’s also large chunks of history that is ignored altogether. At least that’s how I remember. It’s been several years since reading People’s History.
March 19th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
I would be concerned if Zinn’s view of history were the only view that students got. That would be as imbalanced as not getting Zinn’s view.
March 19th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
want to know real history? i have read Zinn and find it very interesting. But if you want to really want to know history read H.T. Odum, “A Prosperous Way Down”. Zinn talks about all the noise, much of which will make you weep. Odum tells the whole truth based on the very laws which control our lives. It will also give you a clear view of the future. I dare ya”ll.