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A People's History of the United States: From 1492 to the Present
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6 new or used available from £7.89
Average customer review:
Product Description
A new edition of this radical social history of America from Columbus to the present. This powerful and controversial study presents a vigorous re-interpretation of the American achievement. It turns orthodox American history upside down and portrays the social turmoil behind the 'march of progress'. Howard Zinn has fully updated his text with substantial coverage of the Carter, Reagan and Bush years and an Afterword on the Clinton presidency. Its commitment and vigorous style mean it will be compelling reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students and scholars in American social history, American studies, and the modern world, as well as the general reader.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #1075934 in Books
- Published on: 1996-11-27
- Original language: English
- Binding: Paperback
- 688 pages
Editorial Reviews
Review
"A brilliant and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those who have been exploited politically and economically and whose plight has been largely omitted from most histories"
Library Journal
"he tells an important and neglected part of the truth"
The Guardian
From the Back Cover
This powerful survey was written as a response to a widespread demand for a serious general history of the United States from the time of Columbus to the present, 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 since it first appeared in 1980.
At that point its coverage ended, necessarily, with the 1970s. Now Howard Zinn has returned to his text, and in this eagerly awaited Second Edition has fully updated it with substantial coverage of the Carter, Reagan and Bush years, and with an Afterword on the Clinton presidency.
"Zinn has written a brilliant and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those who have been exploited politically and economically and whose plight has been largely omitted from most histories. …the book is an excellent antidote to establishment history. Seldom have quotations been so effectively used; the stories of blacks, women, Indians, and poor laborers of all nationalities are told in their own words. While the book is precise enough to please specialists, it should satisfy any adult reader."
LIBRARY JOURNAL (US)
"…he tells an important and neglected part of the truth"
Marcus Cunliffe, THE GUARDIAN
"…he succeeds admirably in his second objective of ‘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’. He may not be able to tell the story of America from dozens of conflicting perspectives…but he does reveal much about the people who are usually missing from American history textbooks: the Arawaks, Cherokees, the English settlers who fled starvation and oppression in the early colonies to live with the Indians, the landless Hudson River farmers, the Negro soldiers of several wars, the Wobblies, women workers, sharecroppers, Big Bill Haywood, Mother Jones, Cubans, Filipinos and Vietnamese."
Charles Glass, NEW STATESMAN
"Professor Zinn writes with an enthusiasm rarely encountered in the leaden prose of academic history, and his text is studded with telling quotations from labor leaders, war resisters and fugitive slaves."
Eric Foner, NEW YORK BOOK REVIEW
Until his retirement, Howard Zinn was Professor of Political Science at Boston University, and his book – passionate, critical, even disrespectful as it can be – remains the work of a scholar as well as a radical.
Customer Reviews
A Real History Book...
This is the book recommended by Matt Damon to Robin Williams in the recent film 'Good Will Hunting' as 'A real History book'. Zinn offers a clear, concise and unapologetically revisionist history of the United States from 'The Bottom Up'. The difference with this book's unilateral stance is that it is made plain, unlike many narrative histories which exclude, ignore, and marginalise behind a screen of academic 'objectivity'. Worth getting excited about.
