Howard ZinnRecensioni

Tells the other side of historic events. The side that does not get told often with an emphasis on the effects of policies envisioned and created that have more or/and different effects other than intended. Howard Zinn claimed that a learned sense of proportion, that the those that make policies matter and everything that gets in their way only gets partial attention if at all, affects the way we make judgements. This book places the people affected by policies as the main source of observation and information.
It seems that the only reason the U.S. ever provides policies for the people is to create a buffer between the people it helps and those that threaten their power. Whether it is politicians gaining power, or special interest groups asking government to protect their wealth or power, the government helps take advantage of the people while making it seem that the policies help the people and are against the special interest. Whether it is to free slaves without giving freed slaves any political or economical freedom, or providing workers protection without any sort of enforcement or at worst helping to reduce workers rights, the policies vision is contrary to its implementation and effects. Wars fought claim to protect the national interest but actually protect the interest of the few. Opposition to the United States borne of intervention policies.
When the author discerns incentives and underlying interests alongside those affected, the book is extremely interesting and hold true to the main point of the book. When the author makes a claim about a portion of those affected and provides an overwhelming amount of events, the book becomes a bit dull as to belabor an idea. When the author belabors particular events that have already been made, it creates a disproportion view of the affected wrongly. When describing events, the author rarely states the other side of the story or if he does, only in passing.

Goes from riches to rags

A Rorschach test, indeed. What do you think about Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States? What do you assume about anyone who would read it?

Many have attempted to ban it. Many think of it as “anti-American.”

Zinn is as “anti-American” as the Preacher in Ecclesiastes is depressing and anti-life. Sure, if you’ve bought into certain narratives, and cannot countenance bursting those particular bubbles, that’s a conclusion to draw.

And, indeed, the standard story of what you were taught in school is highly criticized in this book. The author starts with an unflinching look at exactly what Columbus and his ilk did to the Indigenous people of America. Throughout is a story of well-heeled class interests preserving themselves at the expense of everyone else, and only as much ground given as necessary to keep the whole system from turning on itself. There’s nothing innocent about the United States portrayed in these pages. Its constant failure is on display for all to see.

Everyone who talks about Zinn will say he has his agenda. And he does; he’s very open about it. For that matter, every history has an agenda, because it is an attempt at creating a narrative on the basis of a series of facts, and what one decides to emphasize and what one correspondingly neglects betrays some kind of bias or angle.

If anything, the problem with this work is with Zinn’s naivete and blind spots: he is a Builder who really wants to lionize and consider special the culture of resistance in the 1960s, and he is willing to throw any other attempt at reform under the bus in so doing.

While Zinn confesses the failure of modern communist endeavors because of their priority on party over people, he maintains a Marxist conceit about “A People’s History,” as if the history of agitation and organization against moneyed interests and corporations is “the People’s History”. It would be better titled “The Resister’s History of the United States,” because that’s the tenor of the book.

There’s a lot of things in the history with which to grapple. You learn quite quickly how police today are far nicer to citizens and others than they were in the past. This does not mean police today are nice; it means what was done by police in action against citizens and others in the 19th and early 20th centuries were abominable. Zinn is probably not wrong in how he characterizes the Constitution as enshrining sufficient federal power to advance the interests of the wealthy and the merchants. He’s also probably not entirely wrong that whatever the government has given to assist labor or the less than advantaged is done with a view to maintaining societal stability: just enough is given so that the people don’t rise up in sufficient revolt to overthrow the system.

You’d thus think he would be hard on corporations and those who advanced their interests, and you would not be wrong. He is not a fan of Nixon or Reagan. But it would seem most of his invective comes against those in the Democratic party. He conflates Carter with Reagan and Bush as perpetuating a militaristic, pro-corporate administration. He has no love for Bill Clinton. These are all betrayers of the leftist cause.

Thus, this history is probably more offensive to moderate to centrist leftists than anyone on the right. For Zinn it has always been not enough and never for the right reasons. The diminishment of the efforts of Progressivism in the beginning of the 20th century is notable. Likewise his attempts at casting FDR and the New Deal down from the way it was exalted by many on the left.

This attempt at re-framing what was done in the 1900s and 1930s-40s would be more tolerable if similar skepticism was maintained about what happened from the 1960s onward. Yes, the forms of resistance he talked about are real enough, but none of them were as significant as he would like to imagine. He has a naive confidence in polling about what Americans say they want, trusting their general desires even though the moment said general desires get translated into substantive policy they lose support. People are more invested in the status quo than Zinn would care to imagine.

And the fruit of everything 1960s was not nearly as transformative as Zinn would postulate. The work as written clearly had an arc which was to end with 1992 and the 500th anniversary of Columbus, and discussions of Clinton and the early War on Terror were added later. Zinn died in 2010 and so there would be no real grappling with the 2008 economic crisis and its fallout, with the Obama phenomenon and then Trumpism. Zinn never delves into the “dark side” of populism, the Huey Longs or those like Trump who will emphasize populist themes even though all he does is to the advantage of those with wealth like himself. From the perspective of 2024 it’s hard to maintain the naive confidence that all the resisting Zinn talked about in the second half of the twentieth century really lead to as much transformation as he would have liked to see. And that which was accomplished he takes for granted or again sublimates under the premise that it was only granted to keep things from getting out of hand.

And thus, in the end, this history of the United States really does not give enough credit to many of the changes which have been made, nor to the aspirations of the nation, even recognizing how the reality has always fallen far short of those aspirations. Much of what is in this history are facts, things which actually happened, and they do need to be grappled with in terms of our legacy. The United States is not the force of good we would like to imagine it to be, but should that mean we should just give into the cynicism and not appeal to the better angels of our nature?

The ways Zinn worked to try to change things, apparently, did not work well enough for him or us. What he would like to imagine seems more remote than it was when he was writing. His methods thus did not get us to that imagined better place. Maybe there was more to the reform movements than he would like to give credit; maybe the post-war generation didn’t have all the answers the way they imagined they did. And as the Boomer generation has demonstrated, the only thing worse than idealism is frustrated idealism gone reactionary.

This book was amazing because he is not afraid to say unpopular things and be extra critical of the way our country is run. What i liked most, besides this being an amazing anti war propaganda book, is that Zinn never fell into the trap of "capitalism is bad so communism is good". He was able to be critical of the problems of both systems and urged readers to be critical as well.

This is like the liberal answer to reader's digest, not a history book.

Important, heart-throbing and...boring. This enormous litany of injustices, suffering and exploitation deafens and blunts your senses. First you aroused, outraged, in disbilief, and then you can't percieve it anymore. One death is a tragedy, but a thousand is just statistics...Should be read in teaspoon doses.

In this conversational, meandering (but not in bad way) lecture, Zinn often speaks about what he didn't know, what he didn't learn, why certain points of view were eliminated from the history books and the value of seeing events from the the point of view of the loser. Topics include: westward expansion, Mother Jones, war, and shifts in views on big government.

Excellent important topics. The writing style was hard for me to read, and the lack of reference notes (although I understand the author's reasoning) was also hard for me to read.

Great book that focuses on how everyday people shaped our nation. It's a great addition to most history books that focus on major historical players. Both types of history books are important in order to have a more realistic view of our history.

This book by Howard Zinn is a masterpiece. He writes in Chapter 23 that most histories are over respectful of our leaders and dismissive of the common person. This book sets the record straight and, he does so in elegant prose.

It is easy to read the book and criticize the USA but no country will have a stellar record.

If you are not American, you may get lost in some of the detail. Once you read the Kindle edition of the book, buy the paperback edition. It is worth the investment in time and money.

This is an interesting book, I think, because Zinn did more than just present a linear view of his life; he showed how the actions of so many people he came in contact with encouraged him to make a difference. He also illustrated how he was influenced to change his outlook, both by his experiences (growing up poor, manual labor with mixed races, fighting in WWII) and by the occasional comment made by someone which led him to think and consider. I think his openness to thinking about new ideas is probably one of his most important characteristics.
This book was familiar because I lived through a lot of what he talks about, although at a younger age. It was also instructive because I didn't have a useful framework in which to understand all the events of the times.
Every chapter seems to end, somewhere on the last page, with an inspiring summary. I'm sure every reviewer has expressed amazement that Zinn continued to be hopeful in the face of the long, hard, struggle to create a world in which we all have a chance to be our better selves. He shows us that every person who takes a small step is important.

A multitude of eye-opening truths for those who seek answers, independent of how unsavory they may be. Hats off to Howard Zinn- this should be the American human bible.

I read only Howard Zinn's Emma, but looks like there are other interesting plays in here as well.

"It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart." Thus famously said Anne Frank. I have lived my life clinging similarly to this idea. Howard Zinn's magnificent book makes it difficult. I choose not to shy away from hard or inconvenient truths. But Zinn reveals so many of them, there is such an onslaught of greed and racism and cruelty and deliberate inhumanity on display throughout American history in this unprettied-up, clear-eyed focus on the facts behind American "glory" that I often had a hard time returning to the book. The divisions, the hatred, the false patriotism, the undisguised greed, the twisting of facts that seem to define our current era are no new propositions. They've been with us since before the founding of the nation. But history, usually, is written by the winners, and winners rarely want the world to know what they were capable of in order to win. Zinn set out to write a history of America not from the perspective of the powerful, but from that of the defeated, the poor, the downtrodden, those discriminated against, and, often, the losers in centuries of conflict and ostensible progress. I think Zinn loves America as I do. But I think he, as I, have no interest in a fairy-tale version of our history where goodness and decency has always triumphed. Saint Paul said, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." Freedom does not come from being suckered by pretty lies and distortions. Mankind is a magnificent entity, but it is also a cruel, vindictive, and greedy entity, as well, and history is shaped far more drastically by these qualities than by man's better angels. Zinn rips the blinders off. It's not pretty, but it is an absolutely necessary viewpoint if we are to know who we are and what we stand for. This book is a masterpiece of history, of journalism, and of writing.

Reads like a poorly written text book.

I think it is silly to say that this is a people's history, since the people he is talking about don't write history, rather communist professors do. There is some interesting stuff in here, but it is overall quite tiresome; in summary, poor people, or ethnic minorities, or working class people, take it in the shorts.

My 9th grade history teacher told us that if we only remembered one thing from her class, it should be this: All history is an interpretation.

Almost no historians acknowledge this in their works written for the public, but Zinn admits it right up front. "Thus, 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 Cherokees...."

Instead of using traditional interpretations, the ones typically presented in high school history books, he looks at history through a different lens, the lens of class and racial conflict. While this is fairly commmonplace today, this book was borderline revolutionary when it was first published in 1980. (I read the revised and updated edition from 2003.)

While he sometimes uses anecdotes to generalize and overstate the feelings and sentiments of "the people," this is an important work, one that laid the groundwork for all of the new histories that followed.

Regardless of your politics, this book should be read, if for no other reason, to remind us all what Mrs Hoffman taught us in 9th grade: All history is an interpretation.

Books that talk about the truths behind historical events away from the sanitization of the status quo are wonderful. Using that concept to push outright lies and twisted facts so you can sell a book is NOT.

I don't care what narrative an author is trying to push: writing falsehood as actual history just to sell books with the wave of interest over an interesting topic isn't ethical. It erodes the entire fact that we love to study and discuss history not just for entertainment but preservation. Zinn is not preservation but a rewriter of truth for money.

I wouldn't accept this kind of shady misdirection and lack of proper citation from anyone, whether Zinn, Cambridge or Sesame Street and neither should anyone else.

Books that talk about the truths behind historical events away from the sanitization of the status quo are wonderful. Using that concept to push outright lies and twisted facts so you can sell a book is NOT.

I don't care what narrative an author is trying to push: writing falsehood as actual history just to sell books with the wave of interest over an interesting topic isn't ethical. It erodes the entire fact that we love to study and discuss history not just for entertainment but preservation. Zinn is not preservation but a rewriter of truth for money.

I wouldn't accept this kind of shady misdirection and lack of proper citation from anyone, whether Zinn, Cambridge or Sesame Street and neither should anyone else.

Instructive and eye-opening.

Lots of facts and things that surprised me, and yet made me understand the ethos of the country so much better.

My one criticism is that this is more of a *complimentary* history book, rather than a history book - it (importantly!) presents facts that are often neglected, but also neglects facts that are assumed to be common knownledge.

This is probably just a very personal observation, since I don't know that much about USA history (and therefore probably not the target audience for the book in a way). But I felt a bit lost sometimes, and almost felt like I should have consulted a few mainstream history books first so I could follow along better.

Regardless, this is an important book to have been written, that's for sure. I can see why it's worth the praise it has received, and I'm glad it exists.

Zinn isn't wrong about Columbus - if any thing he pulls his punches. Nonetheless, A People's History is characterized by the myopia of a flattened class analysis, and an affinity for extreme action characteristic of the habituated impotence which is not even capable of wielding political power.

Zinn's is a kind of vulgar populism with near-monomaniacal fixation on violence as the only means of 'true' political change and already enshrined as its own end. Justified by an exhausting (though not exhaustive) catalog of the uncountable dead at the hands of Empire and Capital. Violence (of the oppressed) therefore always finds its justification, though it is uncertain whether violent populism, in the very act by which it succeeds, destroys that which it seeks to preserve: mutual respect between people and the belief in a better society.

Though Zinn makes a conscious effort to include BIPOC and Women's liberation movements in the text, the intentional placement of these struggles in the historical materialist context of 'Class Struggle' flattens the particularity of individuals along the spectrum of labor exploitation and into an easy continuum with the white working classes, and finally the petit bourgeois Reader. Understanding of bigotry as 'The opiate of the masses,’ though true in many cases, is an obvious over-simplification and continues to impede modern political discourse by furnishing simplified objects which are all impediments to actual thought.

A People's History is an admission of impotence (and rejoices in this state). Particularly in its account of the late 20th century, it is reminiscent of the attitude of those who, more recently, were gloating at the news of the death of Margaret Thatcher. In the absence of any significant political power (from which perspective the death of a member of the old guard of the opposition party, long since retired, would have meant nothing) one has resorted to rejoicing at the pain and suffering inflicted by nature [time] itself hypostatized as a kind of righteous vengeance. An analogous example occurs in the text with death of Nixon. Impotence cannot tolerate even the ironic tongue-in-cheek political niceties of the established order. It perceives itself as ‘playing for keeps’ at every moment, and perhaps for this very reason is (almost) always stymied in the attempt to wield the power it craves:

“Both Clinton and Yeltsin, on the occasion of the death of Richard Nixon, expressed admiration for the man who had continued the war in Vietnam, who had violated his oath of office, and who had escaped criminal charges only because he was pardoned by his own Vice President. Yeltsin called Nixon “one of the greatest politicians in the world,” and Clinton said that Nixon, throughout his career, “remained a fierce advocate for freedom and democracy around the world.”

If I can presume to presume, Zinn would have preferred Clinton call Nixon a 'War Criminal' on that occasion - a true statement - which would have been cathartic, if not vicious. But does it make sense for Clinton to speak the truth here - obvious to everyone - yet likely to cause significant political damage to his party? From Alinsky we know that in politics everything is permissible, the question is: "Is it effective?" He is already president. Clinton can afford to 'take an L', and confidently say something he knows everyone knows is false. It is only the impotent and the politically naïve who are compelled to shout the 'harsh truth' at every moment, and for this exact reason are denied.

I come away from A People's History feeling that Zinn doesn't have a great understanding of the modern electorate. Zinn's primary evidence for the feelings of the electorate are opinion polls. These demonstrate that the reactionary welfare cuts/’tough on crime’ rhetoric which was a prominent feature of both parties in the late 20th century was actually unpopular with voters on both sides. Apparently these slogans are at the same time something the electorate disagrees with (in which case the polls are right but the politicians just want to lose elections) and also a distraction of the elite classes which the electorate is convinced to believe (in which case the polls are wrong/oversimplified). Zinn demonstrates the latter is more likely with an example that is supposed to prove his point:

“This was certainly true as a general proposition, that Americans wanted to pay as little in taxes as possible. But when they were asked if they would be willing to pay higher taxes for specific purposes like health and education, they said yes, they would. For instance, a 1990 poll of Boston area voters showed that 54 percent of them would pay more taxes if that would go toward cleaning up the environment.”

This demonstrates that Americans in 1990, even when given perfect information that their taxes would go directly toward improving society (a situation Zinn himself shows is divorced from the reality of the fiscal budget) the vote is still barely on his side. Time and again Zinn shows the vast majority of voters agree with him when asked questions like, 'The government should spend more to help people,' and 'Sentencing for minor criminal offenses should be more lenient," but I am not at all convinced these same people don't clamor to vote for someone who is 'tough on crime' and wants to punish 'welfare queens'. Like most things in political messaging, it is a question of phrasing.

Misc:
Hatred of the Clintons (but from the left) - political premonitions. Hillary's plan is 'too detailed':

“Despite Clinton’s 1997 Inauguration Day promise of a “new government,” his presidency offered no bold program to take care of these needs. For instance, although public-opinion polls through the eighties and nineties indicated that the American people would support a program of free universal medical care supported by the general treasury, Clinton was reluctant to advocate this. Instead, he put his wife, Hillary, in charge of a commission whose final report was over a thousand pages long, impossibly dense and complicated, and yet offering no answer to the problem: how to assure every American medical care, free of the intervention of profiteering insurance companies.”

Summary of the tension of the historical materialist analysis in the text itself:

“When Susan Anthony, at eighty, went to hear Eugene Debs speak (twenty-five years before, he had gone to hear her speak, and they had not met since then), they clasped hands warmly, then had a brief exchange. She said, laughing: 'Give us suffrage, and we’ll give you socialism.' Debs replied: 'Give us socialism and we’ll give you suffrage.'”

Should be required reading for everyone in America, whether or not they are in school.

Zinn's narrative history of the United States is blatantly biased, and he says so in his final chapter and his afterword in this Twentieth Anniversary Edition (which was updated to include the end of the Cold War and talk about some of the Clinton presidency). Zinn is a Marxist and this interpretation suffuses the book. Every poor person is put upon by the system, every baddie is a capitalist pig-dog. There are no really redeeming characteristics about the United States of America in this bleak, propagandistic account. America is so bad, one must wonder—and Zinn never gets close to answering this—why would anyone want to ever come to this capitalist hell hole? Why would colonial settlers, like indentured servants, ever want to come? Why would the Western European poor ever want to come? Why would African slaves ever want to demand their rights here, why don't they all want to go to Africa? Why would the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free," the "wretched refuse of your teeming shore" ever want to leave Eastern and Southern Europe in the late 1800s and early 1900s and come? Why would folks migrate to the burgeoning cities of the Gilded Age? Why would Latinos ever want to come? There has to be SOMETHING that America offers that makes it a magnet to the world? If you read Zinn's book, where capitalism is a con, where the Constitution is a covenant of falsity, where the Declaration of Independence is a joke, you wonder if there is anything good about America. This is its failing. He does highlight lots of folks that are underrepresented in most history books and in most museums, but he misinterprets their plight, their dreams, and their views of America. Communists are never wrong: not the Soviets, not anarcho-socialist bombers, not union thugs, never. Zinn's sins of scholarship, form poor paraphrasing to poor sourcing to false quoting to misinformed reasoning, has been ably covered by many authors, like Oscar Handlin and Sam Wineburg (political liberals) to Mary Grabar (a political conservative). Please read those for a thorough recounting of Zinn's problems. Read Paul Johnson's A History of the American People for a warts-and-all corrective to Zinn's bleak, dystopian, Marxian vision of America.

This memoir was an inspiring read. I knew Zinn from The People's History of the United States, but that was about the extent of it. Learning about his activism and devotion to his beliefs was inspiring. The end statement about hope in the face of seemingly overwhelming power was a good way to end this look at a life devoted to social justice, challenge, and change.

My biggest takeaway from the Zinn Reader was that historic figures, particularly revolutionaries, should be understood in light of their revolutions and not through contemporary legal/social mores. Otherwise the omnibus is a leftist feel good diatribe.