People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present (P.S.) | Howard Zinn

People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present (P.S.) | Howard Zinn | My child will read this book (hopefully)

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People's History o...

	People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present (P.S.) Howard Zinn Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005 - 768 pages average customer review:based on 631 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

History from a different vantage point.

Any student of history or lay person with a passing interest in the history of this country should read this. Some would complain that this has a "leftist" P.O.V., but I would content as Zinn does that this is simply a history by and for the people.

Matt Zarnstorff

My child will read this book (hopefully)

This book inspired me to learn more about the country that I live in. Zinn wrote an absolute classic. I read it about two years ago and will give it another read in a few years as a refresher...& yes I will encourage my child to read this book, probably around the high school age so he can get a real grasp of a people's point of view towards this country's past.

A must read!

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Brilliant, Powerful, Comprehensive

This is a brilliantly presented, comprehensive, and powerful articulation of the true History of the United States. This book carefully explains WHY were are the way we are -- race, class, law, economics, politics, wars, etc.

1. No 'serious' scholar or observer of U.S. History or Political Science should be taken seriously unless he/she can say that they have read this book.

2. This should be required reading in all American classrooms and libraries.

3. As a lover of history (and avid reader), I consider this the MOST important U.S. History book I have ever read.

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A good attempt at a difficult subject

Trying to condense the history of the United States into a paperback book is a daunting, if not impossible, challenge. Howard Zinn manages to pull off this feat by assuming that the reader already has a basic understanding of American History. This leads to some glossing over of topics, but the overall effort is a success. For sure, this is not the history that most of us learned in elementary school (Zinn is particularly harsh on the actions and attitudes of Colonial-era America), but chances are if you're reading this book you looking for a more mature, and possibly challenging, take on the subject.

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Omitting Context Does Not Aid True Understanding

Zinn's history is well-researched and well-written. It is readable, which separates it from about 92% of history texts, and I recommend it to anyone with a good knowledge of United States history and a hunger to learn more.

That said (and "that" is quite a lot), there are also some substantial flaws to this work.

This is a "socialist" history of the United States -- it is written from that perspective, is laced with the appropriate commentary, and selectively provides facts to support its own conclusions. The author defends such a thing throughout the work by insisting that his -- the "other side" -- is a minority viewpoint, offered to balance the overwhelming amount of material that already supplies the viewpoint of the majority.

Let us concede that Zinn's work runs contrary to most of his competitors. It still remains that a highly-biased history, eschewing any pretense towards "balance" or presenting both sides of a conflict, or the relevant context of any given situation, is incomplete. When Zinn discusses, say, Vietnam, and gives us the perspective of the Vietnamese, or of the ethnic minority, or pacifist G.I., it's well and good. We ought to learn about these perspectives that are woefully underrepresented in standard history classes and texts. However, to *only* present that side, and not any other -- to mention "domino theory" without any discussion of Stalin, or Soviet spying programs, or the fallout of the Yalta conference, or the Chinese "support" of North Korea, or Communism itself -- is to do a disservice to the reader. Zinn says that he dislikes such a political, "great man" approach to history altogether (though he enjoys discussing "great men" when he agrees with them, like Malcolm X), but without the greater context, it is impossible to really assess Zinn's critiques which are all written with that context in mind. Anyone who assumes that people reading this already know all about the majority viewpoint of these issues hasn't been on a college campus lately.

Zinn reaches (or at least provides) a number of conclusions, most quite cynical, that the various "reforms" undertaken by U.S. politicians were attempts to mollify a discontented, potentially-revolutionary underclass. Vietnam is presented as a cold, calculated "safety valve" feature -- we send our youth to die in war as a way of distracting our voting populace. In the complete absence of a true discussion of the context of any given conflict, such conclusions are, perhaps, permissible. But they are untenable against the wider backdrop of United States history, which is, perhaps, why Zinn is uninterested in giving us such a backdrop.

This is not to say that Vietnam was "good" or any of the other things that Zinn fights against -- these are fine conversations to have. It is only to say that, in his drive to counter what he feels are 1-sided narratives, Zinn provides his own 1-sided narrative, which winds up being equally as unbalanced, narrow, and biased as those against which he struggles.

Socialists, and their fellow-travelers, will take comfort in Zinn's history, just as some will stick to those histories that ignore all of Zinn's topics -- because they find them comfortingly agreeable with their own, ready-made ideologies. A true student of history, however, ought to pursue an understanding of all sides, and a complete context against which to evaluate particular events, people, and episodes. Such a student will find one side of the story well-presented here, and in an enjoyable format. But the student must understand absolutely that this is only one side of the story, and does not represent a full examination of the events being discussed.

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