Rating: 
Summary: Your best bet for trying to figure out America
Review: This isn't one of those books you can just read by the fireplace. In fact, you might end up using it to stoke the fire. If you're looking for your typical cookie-cutter American history book I'd suggest avoiding this one and looting your nearest middle school library instead. And I wouldn't recommend it to someone who doesn't want to have their bubble burst, either, especially if they believe the United States is the most righteous country in the history of the world. After reading this you may feel disgusted to be an American (or disgusted with Americans), but more likely you'll just be disgusted with the government, and in the future your ability to trust the media and politicians will be hindered. This book pretty much tells you what really happened in the past 500 years. It doesn't glorify or butter up anything. It's good.Like anybody, the author is biased. In the second half of the book you'll start reading about familiar events, events that maybe even occurred in your lifetime, and you'll say, "Wow, it wasn't that bad for me." Or you might think, "This guy's blowing smoke. He has no idea." In any case, remember this book isn't the definitive guide to American history, but it is VERY insightful. I'd also recommend that you already be familiar with basic U.S. government and have a general grasp of American history, otherwise many references will seem obscure and the book will be difficult to get through.
Rating: 
Summary: Imagine this...
Review: Imagine if someday, someone wanted to write a biography about your life. Imagine that your biographer did his research by interviewing every person whom you had ever irritated, every enemy you had, every person who despised you for whatever reason, who felt they wanted to get even, who felt they could profit off of making you look bad, or who had an "axe to grind" in relation to you. Then imagine if they disregarded everyone else who knew you, and wrote the biography anyway. The final product would not be pretty. And that is essentially Howard Zinn's method of writing history. Zinn has a unique way of taking the testimony of one person, and making it seem like the testimony of hundreds, or millions. That's like using the statement of a white supremacist in Boston to make it seem like every man, woman, and child in Massachusetts is an unredeemable racist. He also writes history with an agenda. He knows what he wants his reader to think before the book is finished. And anyone who does this can pick and choose what evidence will support his conclusions. If a particular fact contradicts one of his points, he'll leave it out. If it supports his conclusions but the accuracy of the fact is sketchy at best, he'll put it in. An opinion that supports his conclusions will always be thrown in. History is complicated. You cannot get the whole story from reading one side. If that were the case then the Germans would have sold everyone on the farce that their action in 1939 in relation to Poland was only a counterattack to an invasion by the Poles. The best historians write entire papers on events that Zinn casually glosses over in a sentence or two. That's not history, it's tabloid journalism. Read the book. Entertain yourself with it, but be sure you are aware that it's not the truth. It's full of some incredible lies, omissions, and distortions. In fact, it's just as bad as the "Pro-America" textbooks that Zinn rails against!
Rating:
Summary: extrodinarily biased
Review: This book offers an extrodinarily leftist view of American history. Instead of presenting events in American history as they happened with an attempt at being unbiased, every event is setup with a spin to make it sound like a travesty. If you are a liberal and like to hear how awefull some of our own citizens think the US is go to town. If however you want a true picture of history avoid this book for it offers only critical view points of events that happened for a very good reason beyond the popular belief that our officials are evil.
Rating:
Summary: Fatally flawed. Look elsewhere!
Review: Throughout the book, Howard Zinn pillories "media" and mainstream historians for errors of omission. It's one of his main theses. Why then does Zinn commit repeated omissions of his own? He comments that J. P. Morgan was a Civil War draft-dodger pointedly omitting that the convention of the time that a man could pay another person to stand for the draft. He spends some time on the "Reagan" deficit without mentioning that Congress at that time was in control of the Democratic Party. Zinn writes history with a literary technique that can be described as History writ Large by People who wrote Small. He repeatedly marshals personal communication and anecdote to substantiate his theses. He comes across as the Al Gore of historians: "We need senior prescription medicines because, as Mrs. Elsie Davies Sutherland, who is sitting in the balcony, wrote to me about the problems she and her husband Albert had to go through...". Zinn would draw on the letters of corporals who witnessed Me Lai as if that anecdote was sufficiently representative to tar all military action. Through overblown techniques, Zinn tramples on the useful, valid, and important points that really deserve to be made. To any who grew up in the Vietnam era, Zinn writes in leaping generalizations that violate one's personal experience. Zinn writes from a position of categorical opposition to war. He manages to overlook the possibilities of Germany stopped in Czechoslovakia as much as he overlooks Iraq stopped in Kuwait. He treats the press as monolithic. It obviously is not. He invokes Jesse Jackson as if he were an authorative source instead of a theatrical performer. In the Epilog, Zinn pointed out that the historian has the perogative to choose the facts to present -- and, apparently, to present again and again. For instance, one percent of the people own 40 percent of the wealth. He omits the discussion of the velocity of money. Money is productive when it turns over in the economy. A dollar spent is productive no matter whose wallet it comes from. I would have wished that he wrote a second book, heavily edited by someone not wedded to the vocabulary of class warfare reminiscent of the 1930s. The world needs a record of the events Zinn talks about. The world doesn't need Zinn's weighting of those events and hyperbolic interpretations. Zinn's book and tapes are uncomfortable, not for the substance of the history but for the misreporting and misuse of it. Perhaps someone needs to express a case in the extreme to set the stage for a future, integrating historian. Perhaps Zinn is setting the stage. Wait for the next historian in hopes he does a credible job that Zinn failed to do -- move us intellectually forward. Zinn writes for a cadre of convinced. That is a shame. He presents content that deserves to be in mainstream history but has forced it into a form that ought not leave the bookshelf. Look elsewhere!
Rating: 
Summary: An Outsider Looking In
Review: As a Canadian, I've primarily been exposed to the pop culture version of U.S. history. We learned some American history in our history courses. But it's impossible not to get an impression of U.S. history living next to the "cultural" behemoth.
And this is where Zinn's strength lies, in presenting a well researched critique of "pop" history. History is written by the winners with a few rare exceptions. Zinn is a remarkable exception. Zinn does not have blinders on and doesn't ignore how the weak often lash out other disadvantaged peoples but his main focus is on the struggles of the people against the oppressing powers. Zinn tries to avoid telling history as a tale of great men, but of social conflict of competing interests.
The story of the people struggling against vested interests is just as interesting as the tale of the struggle of great men, but it is sadly lacking in alsmost any treatment of history in popular cultural and the mainstream media.
The major drawback of that it can only be truly appreciated if one has some grounding in history and I have a suspicion that most people's most poignant historical education comes from television and movies. Zinn's analysis demonstrates the serious ommissions in such tales but requires more reading if one is to have a full grasp on American history.
Rating:
Summary: When the dead speak...
Review: What would remain of any nation's "heroes" if history were to be told from the side of the victims and not from the side of "forefather" politicians , militants or conquerors? Not much..Maybe a bloodstained flag and an impressive load of shame... In this tremendous (and at times downright shocking) book by Howard Zinn you will discover several shameful (to say the very least) aspects of american history that you certainly were not taught in school.
Zinn does a thorough job to documentarise the facts from the side of those that have not been allowed to form the official version of history of the U.S as we know it: blacks, Indians, the invaded and the bombed around the globe, as well as the American citizens themselves , especially those that died or were imprisoned and largely forgotten in their struggle to shape the future of America.
I must admit that this book left me thinking how clueless i have been about certain facts even though i consider myself a studier of alternative sources of history. I did not know the gruesome extend of the Indian race by us whites. I did not know it numbered into several millions of people, and i did not know the full extend of their humiliation and degradation. Hollywood westerns have done a good job in distorting (for once more) the truth..
Nor did i know the full story of racism in America and the forms it took way back when slaves (official slaves, mind you) still existed. I was left lingering between the drama and tragedy of these two peoples, the blacks and the Indians, but i was also left with an adequate explanation about the racial tensions and the very fragile social web in America today.
What impressed me the most was that i had almost no idea about the political struggles of the American working class that date back almost 200 years and of which there is hardly a parallel to find even in Europe. It's one thing to know mere "data" such as that the "1st of May" originates in the strikes of Chicago and another to find out that socialism , anarchism and other political ideologies thrived in the U.S or that very intense and brutal battles between the financial establishment and the workers took place in America over an extended period of time. The history of the -literally- 1000s of strikes and the countless dead or imprisoned from the unions was revealing to put it mildly.
Women are a big part of american history forgtten/or covered up, of course. Their side of the story is largely revealed here and adequately exposed as well. The centuries long exploitation and social discrimination and their creative and brave efforts to overturn it.
When it came to America's global imperialism i fared better as that part of history is better documented (especially) in international sources, but still, the invasions of Indochina, or Cuba, the brutal conduction of war in Vietnam or the inhuman decision to bomb Cambodia just to "display power to China" as well as the construction of the big myth of the threat posed by the Soviet Union (that served as an excuse to maintain the "arms race") were uncovered in a new way to me. It's really a vain effort to try and list the issues Howard Zinn deals with in his endeavour. There are many and they are complex. Some readers complain about "scholar issues" or about the writting style of the author. I personally found no problem with either of these . The author is honest and you can almost feel his effort to keep his tone under control especially when you consider what he has to write about (read the book and you will understand what i mean)..
I, in fact, thought that what comes forward is that Zinn writes as what some people would describe as a "patriot" allthough i dont know if the author intends it that way...
All in all, this is easily one of the best books I've ever read simply because it provided me with 100s of answers to matters where my views or my questions were remaining unclarified for too long.
Monumental.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting Book
Review: Maybe I am naïve. Perhaps I am racist and sexist, and don't want to hear the views of women, minorities, and the impoverished. Or, maybe I just didn't like Howard Zinn's book. I think that his basic premise is a sound, no, a noble, undertaking. The true voice of the people is often overlooked. I can accept that as gospel without question. However, it seems to me that to truly correct the mistakes made by past historians, one should paint the entire picture. For example, the abuses suffered by slaves at the hands of their masters are thoroughly documented, but the violent Nat Turner rebellion gets one sentence. I think Howard Zinn has taken a step in the right direction, but there is still more work to do.
Rating: 
Summary: What's wrong with Zinn
Review: Zinn does do a good job of capturing overlooked not so bright moments in the history of America(not the US) that previously were not in history books or well taught in America's schools, at least at the time it was originally published. However, since 1980, probably partly due to his book, there has been quite a bit of revision of history books and of teaching, so that one who went through school the same time I did could hardly miss the periods of slavery, workers' movements, Indian massacres, and wars that may have been previously left out of textbooks or largely overlooked. The book, admittedly, is biased, justified in that "other" history books are equally as biased, if not more biased, in the opposite direction. Perhaps other books have been as biased, at the time of the original printing, but I highly doubt that a history book written in 1996 overlooks the soi disant "people's history" the way one written in 1976 might have. To me, a history book should be a collection of facts, not the collection of facts and emotional appeals Zinn utilizes to gain the reader's sympathy towards the various causes his "people" supported throughout the history of this nation. Throughout the book, Zinn's socialist/Marxist leanings are apparent, as are his efforts to demonize capitalism, which he most noticably lays out in "The Coming Revolt of the Guards". Regardless of the examples found in earlier chapters, that chapter alone calls into question his motives for writing the book. Zinn puts himself squarely in the blame-America-first crowd, placing all the evils of not only American history, but quite a bit of world history, on the hands of the US government, US businesses, and capitalism in general. He uses numerous statements of radicals(the socialist critic quoted on p. 387 is a particularly brutal example), who supposedly represent the "people", no matter how ridiculous and passes them off as either fact or the opinion of the vast majority of Americans. His efforts are especially evident in the polls and referendums he cites, many times using polls with loaded questions and referendums from notoriously left-leaning towns and states. Nearly every referendum he cites is from Berkeley, San Francisco, Madison, Detroit, Minnesota, or Massachusetts(p. 603 - good example). The reader never sees a referendum or poll from Texas, Utah, or other right-leaning town or state, for that wouldn't help make his case that the "people" are being oppressed by business, government, and capitalism. Furthermore, he makes comparisons between apples and oranges, detailing the plight of people in the US versus more recent times instead of versus a comparable country at the same time. Picking and choosing polls is another item in Zinn's repertoire, and this one particularly jarred me as wrong the second I read it: p. 604-605 - the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center found that 12% of those polled in '80(after Reagan was elected) thought too much was being spent on arms, rising to 32% of those polled by the U of Chicago in '82. He then goes on to cite a 1983 New York Times/CBS News poll that showed 48% thought too much was being spent. Strangely enough, the U of Chicago did the same poll in '83, which they've done since '73(skipping '79 and '81) to the present day, and only 34.3% thought too much was being spent, hardly a dramatic increase from '82... Why the need to switch polls midstream, being consistent doesn't bear out your point? Furthermore, a splendid choice of 1980 as the beginning point of the series, the 12% figure was by far the lowest ever recorded by the U of Chicago, with 1978 the next lowest at 22.9%. I'd venture that one could find a period in just about any long-running poll to show a dramatic increase or decrease in opinion depending upon what one wanted to show. There are plenty of anomalies to be found in polls, such as the 12% figure in '80, and using them to provide justification doesn't strengthen one's credibility. Frankly, I'm surprised he cited the sources of the polls, for he did not cite where many of his demographic and associated wealth statistics came from - I'd really like to know where, "between 1980 and 1995, the average wage of worker had declined in purchasing power by 15%", came from. Perhaps, it's Zinn being selective with time periods again, for 1995 was the low point of the 1990s in the US for purchasing power... There are also some absolutely ridiculous statements, such as that the framers of the Constitution required a strong central government for class purposes, to serve the needs of the wealthy and powerful(p. 658). The framers most certainly wanted a weak central government that deferred to the state and local governments whenever possible. The federal government had been quite weak up until the New Deal(and when we decided to start electing Senators popularly). Additionally, Zinn ignores the fact that all resources are scarce, preferring to label them as "made scarce by elite control"(p. 646). Zinn should not be so hung up on how much money those who he demonizes as corporate elitists make, and actually think about what they are saying. By far, the best quote in the book, that of Bill Simon, former Secretary of the Treasury under Nixon and Ford, "Americans have been taught to distrust the very word profit and the profit motive that makes our prosperity possible, to somehow feel this system, that has done more to alleviate human suffering and privation that any other, is somehow cynical, selfish, and amoral", and that we must, "get across the human side of capitalism." Of course, Zinn can't refute his statement, so he resorts to attacking him as a tool of the corporate elite, who once was "earning over $2 million a year"(p. 558). To me, that's not how one should write history. Why should one be allowed to label someone as evil and wrong and not demonstrate why?
Rating:
Summary: Very good, but promotes an agenda
Review: Many positive reviews here acknowledge that Zinn is promoting his own agenda, and suggest that such a method of history is justified because all the other history books out there push the opposite view. First of all, I would like to know, what are these other history books? The first US history text I can remember being exposed to was called "conquering a continent." Perhaps people born 20 years before myself have a different experience, but I do not recall ever being indoctrinated with patriotic propaganda; quite the contrary, with the 60's generation as my teachers (I was born in Nixon administration), I remember from very early on being exposed to a distrust of the "establishment." Zinn himself notes one book that might count as pro-U.S. propaganda--a biography of Columbus--that was written in the 1950s. One reviewer here actually noted that Zinn's text itself was used in his history class. I am afraid that the "dominant" p.o.v. Zinn is responding to ceased to be such about 30 years ago. Second of all, I have a bit of a problem with the idea that history should not attempt to be objective. Zinn is quite explicit, to his credit, in acknowledging that this is his position. The idea is that no one can totally step outside his own perspective, or totally let go of his own prejudices...therefore we should not strive for objectivity, but throw ourselves wholeheartedly behind the promotion of our own political agendas. That being said, this is a very good book: it is very well written and interesting, and it does what it sets out to do. I particularly enjoyed his discussion of the Irish in the Civil War. Zinn's book should not be mistaken, however, for a comprehensive history of the United States. In this way the title may be misleading. "Peoples'" history refers, of course, to the point of view Zinn emphasizes--that of disenfranchized groups; it does not refer to the audience, as if it were called "Everyman's U.S. History" or something like that. Some reviewers have suggested that readers of this book should balance thier education by reading pro-U.S. texts; this seems silly. I would only recommend that readers have a good, objective, understanding of U.S. history before reading this book: then, one might be equipped to sift through what is fact, and what is opinion. For people younger than myself, I am afraid that this might be difficult, because the view of history promoted by Zinn no longer holds the position of the lone voice of the oppressed, crying out in the wilderness, against the mass of pro-U.S. propaganda; rather, as I am sure Zinn would be distressed to know, his view is now the standard--dare I even say (gasp) establishment--view. In short, read the book, just like you should read everything. He says straight out what his agenda is, and if you are dim enough to be "indoctrinated" just by exposure to any given set of opinions, I can't feel too bad for you. Ron, Bee-keeper, age 30
Rating:
Summary: The American History of Non-Winners
Review: Here is a book full of under-appreciated stories that need to be told. Consider the common maxim that history is told by the victors. Uncomfortable facts about both the losers and the victors themselves cannot be found in most standard histories, which often verge on hero worship and forced morality (especially in American history). Howard Zinn has decided to write what is essentially an alternative history of the United States, from the point of view of the non-winners. This usually includes Indians (at least in the earlier parts of the book), blacks, women, and poor white people - that is, everybody not part of the ruling elite. Zinn states in his introduction that he is not even trying to be impartial to all sides (as if historians are always impartial anyway, which they're not), and he merely wants to tell the other sides of the story. This book is sure to cause trouble, especially among conservatives who will complain of rampant political correctness. There's merit to that complaint, but that doesn't invalidate Zinn's project. The most troublesome aspect of this book is Zinn's reconstruction of the American Revolution, in which he contends that the founding fathers were elitists who yearned to oppress the masses themselves, instead of letting the British continue to do it. Thus the passionate movement for "independence" was merely a front by the elitists to manipulate the masses, and the founding fathers don't quite deserve the past 200 years of hero worship. This theme of elitist control runs throughout the rest of Zinn's American history, as the country apparently got off to this poor start and never recovered. Whether you agree or disagree with Zinn's contentions, you will find these previously unknown histories of the non-elite very illuminating. The only problem is the structure and length of this book. Zinn focuses each chapter on a specific episode in American history, such as manifest destiny, abolition, or World War I, and then gives very numerous examples of stories from the other side. This structure leads to a book that is rewarding but very repetitive and verbose. Clearly Zinn worried about omitting important narratives, but there's just too many of them. This problem is alleviated a bit toward the end of the book, as Zinn uncovers some insightful info on modern resistance movements that are hidden beneath the elite-controlled media. But unfortunately this book can be a real slog to get through even though you know that many valuable insights are in store. Perhaps this book can be consulted on a long-term basis, like a very humanistic encyclopedia.
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