A People's History of the United States - Howard Zinn

   1980; 246 pages (first ten chapters only.)  New Author? : No.  Genres : U.S. History, Social Justice, Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating : 9½*/10.

 

    I remember it well: it was the first time I questioned what they were teaching us in American History class.

 

    We had facts to memorize about the Civil War.  It started in 1861 at Fort Sumter.  It ended in 1865 at Appomattox.  It was fought to free the slaves, which Abraham Lincoln did on January 1, 1863 when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

 

    And my junior high school brain wondered:  why was there a two-year gap between the start of the war and when the slaves were freed?  What were we fighting for in 1861-62?  Why isn't the teacher telling us about that time gap?

 

    Later on, in high school or college, I learned that technically, the Emancipation Proclamation only freed the slaves in states that had seceded from the Union.  It did not apply to the slaveholding “border states” of Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and Delaware.

 

    That made me wonder if there was a lot more of what we were being taught as "United States history" also omitted key information.  And why.

 

What’s To Like...

    Note: The full version of Howard Zinn’s 1980 book, A People’s History of the United States, has 21 chapters, and covers topics from Columbus to Watergate.  Later, an “updated” issue was published comprising Chapters 11 onward, with a couple of added chapters that addressed more-recent events.  That book is titled The Twentieth Century – A People’s History; I’ve read it; it’s fantastic, and it is reviewed here.   This present review is for the first ten chapters of the original book, which are:

 

01.  Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress (the Discovery of the New World)

02. Drawing the Color Line (the Birth of Slavery)

03. Persons of Mean and Vile Condition (First Rebellions)

04. Tyranny is Tyranny (All Men are Created Equal, except...)

05. A Kind of Revolution (The War of Independence, the Constitution)

06. The Intimately Oppressed (Women’s Suffrage)

07. As Long as Grass Grows or Water Runs (Indian Removal from the Eastern US)

08. We Take Nothing by Conquest, Thank God (the Mexican-American War)

09. Slavery without Submission, Emancipation without Freedom (the Civil War)

10. The Other Civil War (Labor Unrest in the 1800s)

 

    Howard Zinn was politically an unabashed Socialist, and a prodigious author.  He wrote a series of “People’s History” books, starting with this one, which inspired other authors to take up the cause of writing history from the common man’s point of view.  (See the first excerpt, below.)

 

    That shift of focus makes this book a reading treasure for any American history enthusiast.  It was enlightening to learn about the brilliant Seminole chief, Osceola, and meet the feisty women’s suffragette champion, Sojourner Truth.  Andrew Jackson is aptly described as “the most aggressive enemy of Indians in US history”, and the eloquence of the writings Frederick Douglass was awe-inspiring.

 

    Neither George Washington nor Abraham Lincoln rate very high in Howard Zinn’s opinion.  The former was one of the richest persons in colonial America, and was more interested in preserving the "favored" status of the upper class to which he belonged.  Lincoln was a shrewd politician who knew when to give pro-abolition speeches, and when to give pro-slavery ones.

 

    I learned a lot about workers’ strikes and labor protests, starting as early as the 1600s.  These were never mentioned in my high school history classes: Shays’ Rebellion, Bacon’s rebellion, the Anti-Renter Movement, the Flour Riot of 1837, and many more.  I chuckled to see my boyhood city of Reading, Pennsylvania mentioned.  There, during a strike against the railroad for withholding wages: “two thousand people gathered, while men who had blackened their faces with coal dust set about methodically tearing up tracks, jamming switches, derailing cars, setting fire to cabooses and also to a railroad bridge.” (pg. 243)

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.7/5 based on 14,543 ratings and 3,302 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.07/5 based on 232,910 ratings and 6,782 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Cliometricians (n., plural) : statistical historians.

 

Excerpts...

    In that inevitable taking of sides which comes from selection and emphasis in history, I prefer to try to tell the story of the discovery of America from the viewpoint of the Arawaks, of the Constitution from the standpoint of the slaves, of Andrew Jackson as seen by the Cherokee, of the Civil War as seen by the New York Irish, of the Mexican war as seen by the deserting soldiers of Scott’s army, of the rise of industrialization as seen by the young women in the Lowell textile mills…   (pg. 10)

 

    They organized.  Women struck by themselves for the first time in 1825.  They were the United Tailoresses of New York, demanding higher wages.  In 1828, the first strike of mill women on their own took place in Dover, New Hampshire, when several hundred women paraded with banners and flags.  They shot off gunpowder, in protest against new factory rules, which charged fines for coming late, forbade talking on the job, and required church attendance.  They were forced to return to the mill, their demands unmet, and their leaders were fired and blacklisted.  (pg. 223)

 

“The cry of the poor is not always just, but if you don’t listen to it, you will never know what justice is.”  (pg. 10)

    There’s not much to quibble about in A People’s History of the United States.  In the entire 246 pages of those first 10 chapters, there was only one cussword, a damn, and that was because it was in a direct quote.

 

    Speaking of direct quotes, Howard Zinn knew that there’d be pushback to his “People’s History” tome.  He therefore included a slew of direct quotes in the text, and is to be commended for that.  But be aware that vocabulary, spelling, and capitalization rules in English have changed considerably since the 16^th-19^th centuries.  Reading this book can sometimes be slow and laborious.. But that’s in no way a criticism, and kudos to Zinn for adhering to word-for-word quotations of historical speeches and writings.

 

    We live in a world where books are banned and schoolteachers are muzzled so that only the “my country is always right” side of our nation’s past is presented.  Today, it’s more important than ever to make sure that the complete history of the United States is available for all those who want to learn about it.   Many thanks to Howard Zinn and others for penning this “People’s History” series.

 

    9½ Stars.    And for the record, yes, I did finally learn why the Emancipation Proclamation came out two years after the Civil War started and why it only applied to slaves in the states that had seceded from the US.

The Twentieth Century: A People's History - Howard Zinn

   2007; 512 pages.  Full Title: The Twentieth Century: A People’s History.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : US History; Non-Fiction; World History.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    The image shown to the left notwithstanding, the complete title of this book, as given by Amazon, is: The Twentieth Century: A People’s History.  But what exactly is meant by “A People’s History”, and how does it differ from the hero-centric, “America-the-Perfect” version we all were taught in public schools when growing up?  Well, Howard Zinn is the author, so we’ll let him explain it.

 

    “I prefer to try to tell the story of the discovery of America from the viewpoint of the Arawaks, of the Constitution from the standpoint of the slaves, of Andrew Jackson as seen by the Cherokees, of the Civil War as seen by the New York Irish, the Mexican War as seen by the deserting soldiers of Scott’s army, of the rise of industrialism as seen by the young women in the Lowell textile mills, of the Spanish-American War as seen by the Cubans, the conquest of the Philippines as seen by the black soldiers on Luzon, the Gilded Age as seen by southern farmers, the First World War as seen by socialists, the Second World War as seen by pacifists, the New Deal as seen by blacks in Harlem, the postwar American empire as seen by peons in Latin America.”  (loc. 94).

 

    Well, now.  I think Howard Zinn’s approach to History might be quite eye-opening..

 

What’s To Like...

    The Twentieth Century: A People’s History is a huge excerpt from Howard Zinn’s 1980 magnum opus A People’s History of the United States.  It encompasses Chapters 11-23, which deal with the time period from the 1890s through the 1970s, and so is essentially the latter half of that book.  Zinn then updated things with two new chapters which close out the 1990s.  Later on, that pair of chapters were also added back into A People’s History of the United States.

 

    The book is divided into 14 chapters, plus a prologue.  The chapters are:

01: The Empire and the People (Land-grabbing from Spain)

02: The Socialist Challenge (The rise of unions and the heyday of the Socialist party)

03: War is the Health of the State (World War 1)

04: Self-Help in Hard Times (The Great Depression)

05: A People’s War (WW2, the Korean War, the Bay of Pigs)

06: Or Does It Explode? (The Black Civil Rights Movement)

07: The Impossible Victory (Vietnam)

08: Surprises (Feminist and Native American Movements, Prison Riots)

09: The Seventies: Under Control?  (Watergate, a great Recession)

10: Carter-Reagan-Bush: The Bipartisan Consensus (Iran-Contra, Desert Storm)

11: The Unreported Resistance (Protests of Nukes, Reagan, Iraq war, Columbus Day)

12: The Coming Revolt of the Guards (Zinn’s vision and hope for the future)

13: The Clinton Presidency (Protests in the 1990s)

14: The 2000 Election and the “War on Terrorism” (how the Gore/Bush election was stolen)

 

    It needs to be recognized that politically, Howard Zinn was a Socialist.  As such, he is unimpressed with both the Democratic and Republican presidents and parties, viewing the two parties as pretty much the same, particularly when it comes to Capitalism and Imperialism.

 

    The book is chock full of interesting history tidbits.  I enjoyed learning about “Bootleg Coal” and the birth of the CIO labor union.  I never knew (or had since forgotten) that Native Americans "liberated" Alcatraz Island in 1969 and claimed it for their own.  The “Rules for Female Teachers” in chapter 2 were eye-opening and I was surprised to learn that Eugene Debs, the perennial Socialist candidate for president way back when, spent 32 months in prison for violating the “Espionage Act”.

 

    It was fun to become reacquainted with  various Americans who have gradually faded from memory: Joseph McCarthy, Rosa Parks, Aldous Huxley, the brothers Philip and Daniel Berrigan, Shirley Chisolm, Angela Davis, Noam Chomsky, and many more.  I was amazed to learn that the author Jack London and the activist Helen Keller were both deeply associated with the Socialist Party.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.4/5 based on 84 ratings and 47 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.16/5 based on 1,120 ratings and 80 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    For the United States to step forward as a defender of helpless countries matched its image in American high school history textbooks, but not its record in world affairs.  It had instigated a war with Mexico and taken half of that country.  It had pretended to help Cuba win freedom from Spain, and then planted itself in Cuba with a military base, investments, and rights of intervention.  It had seized Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, and fought a brutal war to subjugate the Filipinos.  It had “opened” Japan to its trade with gunboats and threats.  (…) It had sent troops to Peking with other nations, to assert Western supremacy in China, and kept them there for over thirty years.  (loc. 2234)

 

    From 1964 to 1972, the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the world made a maximum military effort, with everything short of atomic bombs, to defeat a nationalist revolutionary movement in a tiny, peasant country—and failed.  When the United States fought in Vietnam, it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human beings won.

    In the course of that war, there developed in the United States the greatest antiwar movement the nation had ever experienced, a movement that played a critical part in bringing the war to an end.  (loc. 3405)

 

Kindle Details…

    The Twentieth Century currently sells for $12.49 at Amazon.  Howard Zinn has several dozen more e-books at Amazon, almost all of which fall into the genres of Politics and/or History, and range in price from $5.99 to $17.99.  There are several other authors who write history books with the “People’s History” slant, including A People’s History of the World by Chris Harman which right now goes for $10.99, which may well be my next venture into this sub-genre.

 

“When the guns of war become a national obsession, social needs inevitably suffer.” (Martin Luther King Jr.)  (loc. 3285)

    There’s not much to quibble about in The Twentieth Century: A People’s History, provided you understand where Howard Zinn stands politically.  But it did seem like, as the book made its way towards present times, historical accuracy started morphing into the author’s wishful thinking.

 

    This was especially evident in chapter 13, where Howard Zinn tediously recounts all sorts of minor protests in the 1990s, making it sound like there was civil unrest of similar magnitude to what was seen in the 1900s decade and again the 1950s.  That simply isn’t true, the unions at the close of the 20th century were pitifully weak and the Socialists had long faded into being a fringe party.  Zinn’s rationale as to why the Reagan/Bush electoral landslides don’t count is also rather weak.

 

    But perhaps this was inevitable, since the closer “history” comes to being “current events”, the more speculative it inherently becomes.  For example, if I were to try to write the history of the Covid pandemic and the 2016/2020 presidential elections today, I am certain that in 20 years it will be found to have lots of inaccuracies.

 

    9 Stars.  Overall, it was really nice to see the ordinary people get the recognition they deserve for the shaping of American history events.  Even growing up, I enjoyed learning how things actually went down instead of the whitewashed history we were all fed in junior and senior high school.  Thank you, Howard Zinn, for making the term “People’s History” familiar to those readers who aren't historians.  I will be on the lookout for more of your books.