A Peopleʻs History of the United States

By Zinn, Howard

Book Id: WPLBN0100002610
Format Type: PDF eBook:
File Size: 28.29 MB
Reproduction Date: 1/1/1980

Title:	A Peopleʻs History of the United States
Author:	Zinn, Howard
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Non Fiction, Political Science, American History
Collections:	Authors Community, History
Historic Publication Date:	1980
Publisher:	Longman Group UK Limited

Member Page:	History Is A Weapon .org
Citation APA MLA Chicago Zinn, B. H. (1980). A Peopleʻs History of the United States. Retrieved from http://www.self.gutenberg.org/

Description
A People's History of the United States is a 1980 non-fiction book by American historian and political scientist Howard Zinn. In the book, Zinn seeks to present an alternate interpretation of the history of the United States. According to the author, American history is to a large extent the exploitation of the majority by an elite minority. (Wikipedia)

Summary
Howard Zinnʻs celebrated 'peopleʻs history' was a response to the widespread demand for a serious general history of the United States written from a radical, non-Establishment point of view. it was intended as a counterweight to the many conventional American histories which chronicle the country's story through the activities of political leaders, heroes and saviours of the nation. Here instead is history 'from the bottom up'. Powerful, fluent and argumentative, its vigorous reinterpretation of the American achievement, and its cost, has provoked debate amongst historians and laymen alike. Professor Zinn tells the story of Columbus's arrival in American from the standpoint of the Indians who welcomed him to the Bahamas. He looks at colonial America from the standpoint of the black slave, the white indentured servant, and women; and at the American Revolution through the popular rebellion the Founding Fathers sought to control. The story of the Civil War is not centered on Lincoln but on black abolitionists and workers against the draft; the story of the late nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution is centered on the agrarian rebels, striking workers and exploited immigrants; the 'Age of Reform' in the twentieth century, from Roosevelt to Roosevelt, is set in the context of labour struggles, radical trade unionism, and the socialist and communist movements. There is an unorthodox essay on the Second World War, and Vietnam is studied from the vantage point of civilian and military dissidents. This passionate and dramatic account turns orthodox American history upside down, portraying the suffering and turmoil behind 'the march of progress'. Where Howard Zinn deals with governments and their policies he is critical, even disrespectful; but he does not try to whitewash the popular movements that occupy the centre of the stage, and his "People's History" remains the work of a scholar as well as a radical.

Table of Contents
1. Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress 2. Drawing the Color Line 3. Persons of Mean and Vile Condition 4. Tyranny is Tyranny 5. A Kind of Revolution 6. The Intimately Oppressed 7. As Long As Grass Grows Or Water Runs 8. We Take Nothing by Conquest, Thank God 9. Slavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom 10. The Other Civil War 11. Robber Barons And Rebels 12. The Empire and the People 13. The Socialist Challenge 14. War Is the Health of the State 15. Self-help in Hard Times 16. A People's War? 17. "Or Does It Explode?" 18. The Impossible Victory: Vietnam 19. Surprises 20. The Seventies: Under Control? 21. Carter-Reagan-Bush: The Bipartisan Consensus 22. The Unreported Resistance 23. The Clinton Presidency and the Crisis of Democracy 24. The Coming Revolt of the Guards 25. The 2000 Election and the "War on Terrorism"