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Summary: An important work that needs to be read, no matter what.....
Review: This is my second reading of Zinn's classic account of American History. Please be forewarned! This book will likely make you uncomfortable about what our past was. No matter. In the end when all is said and done we are a product of what we were and judging by what America is today we have done very well. Zinn gives you a perspective on history that is different from other scholars (ex. Samuel Eliot Morison). There is the good, the bad and the plain very bad. Ther are no glossy pictures and maps. The writing is crisp and the text is peppered with anecdotes. This is not a "leftist" view of American history. All nations have their skeletons. This book bares it all. How amazing is America! In spite of all we have made tremendous progress. Some reviews have categorized Zinn as a "leftist" with an axe to grind. I found no such bias. Instead I suspect the author's love for his country shows by his precise depiction of our past. This is a book that will require some honest introspection. An excellent work that needs to be read by all Americans.
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Summary: Essential reading...
Review: Of course this book is not meant to be read as an all-encompassing version of American history. It is meant to be read as a sidenote to the conventional American history we are taught for so many years in school. Of course it's biased, but then again the history textbooks we read in school were biased. Those books were written with an unquestioned assumption that America as a country (which is defined by its leaders in the books) has always been correct (or at least well-meaning), and has always had liberty, freedom, and justice as our main inspiration. The Revolutionary War was the perfect battle between good and evil and everyone benefitted. Loyalists were humorously tarred and feathered (never killed). Atrocities like our meddling in the Phillipines is glossed over or ignored. I also always was amused by the fact that I was forced to take about 5 years of American history from 1st-12th grade, but we always ran out of time before we got to Vietnam, Watergate, and Iran Contra. I was 13 before I found out ON MY OWN that we lost the Vietnam War!
I'll gladly read "conventional" history, but I also believe this is essential reading to go along with it. That doesn't make me Anti-American, a leftist wacko, a self-hating Communist, or whatever it is you'd like to label me and dismiss me as. I just want the full story. I just want the truth. We should all strive for that, however much it may bruise our egos and damage our pride. Admit there's room for improvement America! Read this book! :)
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Summary: Great Book to counter bull taught in elementar schools
Review: Must read if you received the standard whitewashed polished history in school. It will change the way you view the USA.
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Summary: A refutation of an earlier criticism.
Review: If the comment editors allow, let me refute an earlier reviewer's criticism and then praise this great book. The reviewer wrote as one example of his dislike for this book: "...presenting some matters as factual when they are in truth utterly incorrect (Andrew Carnegie could not have fought in the revolutionary War, he had not been born yet)." Clearly, this reviewer's reading comprehension scores were never that high. Zinn writes on pg. 249 of the HarperPerennial edition that Carnegie avoided service in the Civil War by paying for a substitute. Additionally, this reviewer should consult a dictionary, for the phrase is short-sighted not "short-sided". Obviously, it's the reviewer who can't see beyond his own poor education and indoctrination with regard to this work. I can't say enough good things about this book. I bought my first copy in the mid-80s. It was replaced by subsequent volumes and many were purchased as gifts. Now that another updated edition which brings us up through the Clinton years to the Presidential appointment of 2001 I have already placed this on my wish list. I urge you to buy this book for yourself (and children and relatives) to learn the history you weren't taught in school.
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Summary: A reference book for dark chapters in American history
Review: This book is useful for quick references to lesser-known, yet significant events in American history. For example, if one wants to know what the deal was between the US and Nicaragua or Grenada, one can take a quick look through chapter 21. However, I write this review as a sort of sensible defense of the book. I think that it does not necessarily bash the United States. It does, as others have noted, point out our (we Americans) shameful moments when we did not live up to our own high-minded self-perceptions. As the preeminent national power in the world, it is essential that the US take stock of its entire history that we should not be so arrogant and irresponsible with our power. To dismiss this book as a polemic against the American way of life may fail to appreciate what this book has to offer. To dismiss it as a Leftist screed is to bury one's head in the sand and ignore that American democracy does not ensure a just social outcome. As no nation is perfect, as genocide has been carried out by nearly all nations at some time, so has the United States. Contrary to some assertions, Zinn does not find that all white guys are bad. There are many references in the book to those men and women who have championed the cause of justice and brotherhood. They are as often white as American apple pie. The more useful point is that "white guys" are no more saints than others have been throughout recorded history. In fact, Zinn at one point is explicit about the score of humans sacrificed by the Aztecs (who consequently were not white). So to suggest that Zinn is saying that all Caucasians are bad is to assume but one narrow point of reference. Like others, I find that Zinn has his bias. But what the heck, his is the counter to the bulk of history books out there that largely ignore America's unsavory and downright aggressive moments. I would think that anyone who has been reading traditional history books should get a kick out of reading something so outrageous! If people care anything for truth, they should take Zinn's book, than take a traditional (non-Zinn) text, and make some comparisons. After reading the section on the Vietnam War (an unsavory moment to say the least) I wanted to get a hold of a copy of The Pentagon Papers to see for myself if Vietnam policy was as Zinn recorded it. Nothing wrong with that is there? At any rate, everyone has a bias no matter how many PhDs he has hanging on the bathroom wall. To Zinn's credit, he is honest about it.
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Summary: a layman's view....
Review: Since I'm not an "academic" or historian, I can not verify every detail contained in this book as factual or not. However, to those who would suggest that the overall gist is severely biased, a cursory knowledge of history is all you need to know that indeed oppression and exploitation of minorities and women are concrete foundations upon which this country was built. Of course every empire has been forged with these same tools, and some people's ... equivalency may cause them to a sort of felicific calculus in which the USA is considered the least oppressive and violent of the great empires (Rome, Britain, Ottoman, etc.)and therefore should escape any culpability, but I don't feel that's the case. The book to me does not equate into a simple message of "People with land, money, and power are bad, while people without land, money, and power are good" as one reviewer wrote, but rather the message that people with land, money and power will commit very [horrible] acts and propagate a terribly inequitable system to KEEP their land, money and power at a very great human cost. Call it socialism if you will, but slavery, patriarchy, and [destruction] are inescapable articles of evidence that are in fact contained in school textbooks, but are often glossed over with the "healing" lacquer of time and distance. The reason I think this book's message is important is not because it promotes "anti-Americanism" but because these figures of history who we see as great men and heroes were in fact the same breed of creature who still live, walk, work and control human society today. The past blends seamlessly into the present and inexorably into the future, and we should never be fooled into thinking that the hideous motivations which shaped our history are safely locked into the distant past. In order to reconcile the historical injustices which have brought us where we are at and which continue to this day, we need to be very sober in our remembrance of the world we have created, and the people who were trampled on and forgotten to create "the greatest country on Earth". Good book, give it a read.
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Summary: Eye opening!
Review: Ok - these are things you didn't learn in grade school - and maybe you should have! It's important to know the truth! This book is hard to put down. A friend loaned the book to me...I liked it so much I bought my own copy.
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Summary: Irresponsible, short-sided, and inaccurate.
Review: In reading this book, I was nothing if not amazed at the amount of historical exclusions, inaccuracies, and gross-generalizations that make me wonder how Zinn could call himself an academic. From one history scholar to another, I find his writing, while elaborate and vivid, to be wholly irresponsible. Zinn makes gross generalizations that are without any foundation, while presenting some matters as factual when they are in truth utterly incorrect (Andrew Carnegie could not have fought in the revolutionary War, he had not been born yet). History writing is always going to be biased, and I will give credit to Zinn for at least acknowledging his personal bias, although this should be done in the beginning of the book, not the end. However, it is the resposnibility of any history academic to present their thesis, and opinions as just that, and to not present them as facts, they are conclusions made by the author, not verifiable truths of history. Zinn fails to act responsibly to his readership, and although I believe students should read this book, they should not be lied to, or confused into believing Zinn's opinions and conclusions are undeniable truths. Zinn does a great dis-service to the entire history academic community in this regard, and I am personally ashamed for such.
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Summary: A note on revisionist history
Review: Howard Zinn's A PEOPLE'S HISTORY is probably the most famous example of revisionist history. What is revisionist history? Well, most importantly, it is an attempt to show important historical events from the perspective of those who have not typically written history, for example women, African-Americans, poor and working-class people, gays and lesbians, among others. Take, for example, Zinn's very brief analysis at the end of the book about the Clinton years. The popular press portrayed, consistently and repeatedly, the 90s as a decade of prosperity and a booming stock exchange, with poverty nowhere in sight. The 90s dawned as communism, it's enemy, collapsed. The 90s was the alleged triumph of capitalism. But Zinn looks critically at just who "triumphed" and what kind of "triumph" it was. He gives us different "dispatches" from the 90s, voices not likely to be heard in The Wall Street Journal: workers displaced from good-wage blue-collar jobs as those jobs moved overseas thanks to free-trade agreements; welfare mothers supporting families on minimum wages because the public believes they had to "work for their check" while the defense budget soars; the degradation of public schools and services; chronic poverty among African-Americans. What this revisionist history of the 90s does is two-fold: 1) it creates an alternative narrative of the 90s, as a decade in which the social safety net was sacrificed to fill the coffers of the highest 1%, and 2) in creating this coutnernarrative, Zinn revealed how "constructed" this official history is, that is, that any history that claims the 90s as the "triumph of capitalism" is able do so only by ignoring and suppressing those other dispatches from the 90s. So the claim that Zinn is biased is, therefore, irrelevant. History, as Zinn himself claims, is constructed from an endless supply of evidence and events. The historian operates on assumptions (that is, ideology), to create history. Zinn is quite upfront that he is "anti-capitalist" and frankly, I think he bleakly illuminates the endless pain capitalism has wreaked on the majority of the population while a tiny minority lives off the fat. To point out Zinn's bias is merely to help him make his point. The reality is that the left is aware of its ideology; the right pretends its ideology and history is merely "natural."
Rating:
Summary: Anticapitalist Screed
Review: There is but one necessary observation surrounding this horrible book: anyone who abhors private ownership of capital
and the concentration of wealth has no business writing any sort of history of the United States.
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