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A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present (Perennial Classics) Paperback – April 1, 2003

by Howard Zinn (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 401 ratings
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Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, A People's History of the United States is the only volume to tell America's story from the point of view of -- and in the words of -- America's women, factory workers, African Americans, Native Americans, working poor, and immigrant laborers.
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  1. Print length
    752 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Harper Perennial
  4. Publication date
    April 1, 2003
  5. Dimensions
    5.31 x 1.2 x 8 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0060528370
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0060528379
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

According to this classic of revisionist American history, narratives of national unity and progress are a smoke screen disguising the ceaseless conflict between elites and the masses whom they oppress and exploit. Historian Zinn sides with the latter group in chronicling Indians' struggle against Europeans, blacks' struggle against racism, women's struggle against patriarchy, and workers' struggle against capitalists. First published in 1980, the volume sums up decades of post-war scholarship into a definitive statement of leftist, multicultural, anti-imperialist historiography. This edition updates that project with new chapters on the Clinton and Bush presidencies, which deplore Clinton's pro-business agenda, celebrate the 1999 Seattle anti-globalization protests and apologize for previous editions' slighting of the struggles of Latinos and gays. Zinn's work is an vital corrective to triumphalist accounts, but his uncompromising radicalism shades, at times, into cynicism. Zinn views the Bill of Rights, universal suffrage, affirmative action and collective bargaining not as fundamental (albeit imperfect) extensions of freedom, but as tactical concessions by monied elites to defuse and contain more revolutionary impulses; voting, in fact, is but the most insidious of the "controls." It's too bad that Zinn dismisses two centuries of talk about "patriotism, democracy, national interest" as mere "slogans" and "pretense," because the history he recounts is in large part the effort of downtrodden people to claim these ideals for their own.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Howard Zinn is a historian, playwright, and social activist. He was a shipyard worker and Air Force bombardier before he went to college under the GI Bill and received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. He has taught at Spelman College and Boston University, and has been a visiting professor at the University of Paris and the University of Bologna. He has received the Thomas Merton Award, the Eugene V. Debs Award, the Upton Sinclair Award, and the Lannan Literary Award. He lives in Auburndale, Massachusetts.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Perennial; Trade Paperback Edition (April 1, 2003)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 752 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0060528370
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0060528379
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.7 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.31 x 1.2 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 401 ratings

About the author

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Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn

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Howard Zinn (1922-2010) was a historian, playwright, and activist. He wrote the classic A People's History of the United States, "a brilliant and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those ... whose plight has been largely omitted from most histories" (Library Journal). The book, which has sold more than two million copies, has been featured on The Sopranos and Simpsons, and in the film Good Will Hunting. In 2009, History aired The People Speak, an acclaimed documentary co-directed by Zinn, based on A People's History and a companion volume, Voices of a People's History of the United States.

Zinn grew up in Brooklyn in a working-class, immigrant household. At 18 he became a shipyard worker and then flew bomber missions during World War II. These experiences helped shape his opposition to war and passion for history. After attending college under the GI Bill and earning a Ph.D. in history from Columbia, he taught at Spelman, where he became active in the civil rights movement. After being fired by Spelman for his support for student protesters, Zinn became a professor of Political Science at Boston University, were he taught until his retirement in 1988.

Zinn was the author of many books, including an autobiography, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, the play Marx in Soho, and Passionate Declarations. He received the Lannan Foundation Literary Award for Nonfiction and the Eugene V. Debs award for his writing and political activism.

Photographer Photo Credit Name: Robert Birnbaum.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
401 global ratings
Finally got the book I've always wanted to get at the library.
5 Stars
Finally got the book I've always wanted to get at the library.
Arrived in same condition as describes. I wiped it down and like to cover my paperbacks with the plastic self sticking stuff. Browning at the edges of the pages, inside had black specks of ink or pencil but that's ok. Glad to give the book a second home.
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Top reviews from the United States

J. Goldsmith
5.0 out of 5 stars Hmmm
Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2024
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Wow. The way we LOVE America is so deflected by how bad our government has always been to us. It's as if our politicians seriously only lie to us during campaigns telling us what we want to hear. Then they're elected and their attitude is f*** off. You voted for me. Now go away
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Mishal Kanoo
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent service
Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2024
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No fuss and no hassle. Book arrived on time and as described.
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M. Smith
5.0 out of 5 stars A Purchase You'll Never Regret
Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2015
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For a realistic, surprisingly interesting history of the United States that's not mostly just a list of presidents and dates of wars, this is an excellent resource. Howard Zinn thinks far more about the causes and details of some of the most important aspects of our past than one usually sees. I just wish the history textbooks for my public school years had been written by this man. There would be many more history buffs in the world, and far more people who understand the cycles of history and their importance. Zinn includes peoples and issues that most histories never bother to acknowledge at all, regardless of their actual importance. I can't help wondering how different (and better understood) our current times would be if we had all been exposed to a more complete, thoughtful history of our country--like this one--from the time we entered school.
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Ernest Buckler
5.0 out of 5 stars Should be required reading for ALL hi-school seniors
Reviewed in the United States on December 23, 2013
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...and smart hi-school freshmen. Along with every literate American. This book by Zinn cuts out ALL the propaganda delivered by history books written by authors on the payroll of the victors. For instance, the first thing you'll learn here is that our so-called heroic discoverer, Christopher Columbus, was an immoral subhuman psychopath who just happened to know how to sort-of navigate a ship (tho he was only off by 10,000 miles) who by any standards of decency should have been run thru with a spear the instant he set foot on land. Then Cortes and Pizarro, likewise men with no conscience, did the same thing under the authority of the King of Spain AND the Pope, who answered a priest's inquiry about the morality of what they were doing (planned massacres of the natives using trickery and metal weapons) that such behavior "had been approved by the highest authorities". Not only were these mass murders carried out in the name of God and King, the perpetrators were proud of their deeds and bragged about their evil work in open letters which have been preserved as objects of pride. You will cry and rage in the same paragraph. The meanness and stupidity and avarice continues by way of stories of the people of the new land, a testament only to greater men and women who overcame such horrible beginnings (Pilgrims? Good folks? Read this book and be appalled.)

I'm 72 yrs old - and have just realized that I (we all) should have read this book the year it was published, that we be not so self-righteous about our origins, as well as more alert to the damages done by greed-driven sociopaths in high places.
3 people found this helpful
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Daniel R. Sanderman
4.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Perspective for Understanding the Complete Past
Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2005
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There are those who have called Howard Zinn "unpatriotic" and who have denounced his book as left-wing propaganda. Nothing could be further from the truth. I would like to ask these individuals how they define patriotism. If one defines a patriot as a blind bigot who is ready to march to the ends of the earth for their country without looking where he or she is going, perhaps then Zinn is not a patriot. This book pulls plenty of punches at our country's past. However, these are not exactly cheap punches. Zinn has certainly done his homework. The information in this book is out there for any historian to find. Zinn's cardinal sin, for those on the conservative side of the aisle, is apparently that he collected these incidents together in a single volume.

But if one defines a patriot as someone who believes in attempting to change our country for the better, through the power of a complete history, then Zinn satisfies in spades. Why has Zinn collected these stories and told the history of the United States from the minority perspective? Quite simply, the majority perspective has been taught to us from the first grade. Moreover, he tells us in the opening chapter:

"If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should, I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, occasionally to win. I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare" (11).

There are a couple of important things to point out about Zinn's intentions. First, he believes that a history, in order to provide the present with meaningful content with which to construct a better future, must be a complete history, one that does not hide from its weak moments. Secondly, by telling these forgotten stories, say the full story of Christopher Columbus's journey into the Americas, you will force American citizens to take a second look at the issues and problems of the past, realize their relevancy to the present, and provide the intellectual fodder for us to improve upon our imperfect past.

I know it sounds like I am crafting a high ideal for this book, but I think the ideal is true to Zinn's intentions. Read this book if you would like to explore American history from an angle that is frequently passed over in standard history books and courses. Any student of history will realize that all of these angles--be they liberal, conservative, etc.--are just that--merely angles or perspectives. But the "truth" cannot be found in any single one of these perspectives. Rather, by taking in the totality of perspectives, one comes to understand history and find meaning in the totality of our experience.
22 people found this helpful
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Swimfast
5.0 out of 5 stars What they didn't teach you in high school history class
Reviewed in the United States on April 7, 2021
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Great story of the groups in the US that did not win. The women, immigrants, black people, mine workers, strikers, etc. As I read it I thought "did this really happen this way?" and then I got up to the 60's where I had expercience the history first hand and saw that what Zinn was saying was true for that period and must be for the previous 200 years. A real eye-opener. Should be required reading in HS.
3 people found this helpful
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Low Hertz
5.0 out of 5 stars Simply put, as a history buff, by far the best book I have ever read.
Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2014
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Best book I"ve ever read.
My most recent order is a hard copy for my Mom, who's sharp as a whip and hip, though in an assisted living hom.
Bought the expensive hard copy for her hoping it will have larger print.

Howard Zinn tells the history of American from the view of the people, not the leaders, so it's far more accurate.
Slavery from the viewpoint of the slaves.
Native Americans from their view point.
American wars from the viewpoint of the solders.
The New England textile mills from the viewpoint of the workers.
Mining towns from the viewpoint of the minors.
The Japanese interned from the viewpoing of the Japanese.
Should be required reading companion for all students. Alas, not in the days of indoctrination.
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Music Lover
5.0 out of 5 stars Good
Reviewed in Canada on May 30, 2020
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Easy to read and interesting.
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MH
5.0 out of 5 stars Great package! Great Book!
Reviewed in Germany on April 11, 2016
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Was sent very fast and packed safely so no damages to book. The book itself is a heavy read but worth it if you want to get some good facts.
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Pangolin S.E.P.
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, différent
Reviewed in France on December 10, 2015
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J'avoue, je n'ai pas tout lu, mais ce livre apporte un regard qu'il est bon de connaître quand on veut avoir une vision d'ensemble des Etats-Unis et de leur histoire. Ce livre est même cité dans Will Hunting. Il s'agit de "progressive history", l'histoire plutôt vue du côté des perdants, autant que possible.
One person found this helpful
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frederic chalouin
5.0 out of 5 stars Ras
Reviewed in France on May 9, 2021
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El Corazón
1.0 out of 5 stars Marx would have loved it
Reviewed in Germany on May 26, 2016
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Zinn's book would have been a perfect read for students in communistic countries. Maybe the author was dreaming of seeing his portrait next to Marx and Lenin on the red flag. Too bad the book was published only in 1999, many years after the idea of socialism/communism and the theory of class struggle had been proven deadly wrong and not compatible with human nature. Good for Zinn, he lived in a country where he was not only allowed to publish his ideas but even to sell books. Amazing. In a socialist society, which he is obviously dreaming of on every page, such a critic of the system could have never done like that without facing severe consequences and probably spending the rest of his life in a labour camp.

The book, with the convenient benefit of hindsight, is pretty much a stringing together of all the big. small and minor events in American history, often taken out of their context, that Zinn desperately tries to connect to 'class struggle' and the 'big business suppresses the people' - sort of idea. It is just miserable and bad. The world is different. Fortunately.
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