Reviews

A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present by Howard Zinn

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loritian's review against another edition

5.0

I've been giving away copies of this book since it came out. I've been meaning to reread it for years but every time I picked up a copy I'd find someone who really needed to read it. I'm one of the Johnny Appleseeds of this book. This time I picked up the audiobook. No not the abridged Matt Damen version but the full deal read by Jeff Zinn. Priceless.

breezy0844's review against another edition

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4.0

This left me with an uneasy, slightly dirty feeling after reading this book. It makes me think that our government is a bunch of petty, greedy, egotistical maniacs who are trying to over compensate for their small... phallus... It pains me to see America's current level of insanity... Fighting guns with bigger guns, but only the innocent being hurt in the meanwhile. I could go on and on, but needless to say, our history books lie, our government lies, and anyone who questions or speaks the truth is silenced, either by imprisonment or death. What a great country.

northstar's review against another edition

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5.0

I read the first half and set it aside for later. History is written by the winners, and Zinn writes from the perspective of the losers in the US colonialization game: Native people, Mexican people, African-American people, children, women, poor people. What might the world look like if Columbus and his ilk had landed on North American shores and tried to learn from the people who lived there, instead of exterminating them? And so on. Go read it.

tnews333's review against another edition

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5.0

Knowing the slant of the Author (having heard him interviewed many, many times on Democracy Now when I/we lived in the Houston area)l, I enjoyed hearing a different view of world and US events from that presented to me as a student in the United States. At times he gave hope and pride in recounting the efforts and successes of peoples movements. I particularly enjoyed hearing of organized labor successes that the educational system did not flesh out as thoroughly as Zinn.

I wonder what the next chapter in his book would have looked like.

I wonder too, how the current world events are shaping the themes of economic inequality, systemic racism, and people pulling together to do for themselves when governments fail them. What would Zinn have made of social media? If you've not watched the Netflix documentary "Social Dilemma" do so! And read/listen to this book.

I'll admit in my last lines of this review that I quilted, cleaned, cooked while listening to this book. I did not give it the attention I would a textbook for a class. Take my review in consideration of this fact.

wjacksonata's review against another edition

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5.0

It took nearly the gestation period of an elephant, but I finished it! The writing is incredibly dense; each chapter contains a staggering amount of information (hence the slow read). Definitely five stars - should be required reading for Americans and anyone affected by American economic or foreign policy (soooo, pretty much everyone on the planet). Warning: the information may be confronting for anyone not previously exposed to non-mainstream perspectives of American history (see, for example, a handful the one-star reviews).