A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present by Howard Zinn
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Technically I didn’t finish this book. I got ever-so-slightly more than halfway in before I finally surrendered. If I had continued, at the pace I was going it would have been another year, at best, before I conquered the second half. That is to say, this book, though worthwhile, is not really a dynamic read.
The author focuses exclusively on the people and stories that conventional history books overlook, and reveals some shocking truths. The early chapters were for me the most compelling. Yes, we’ve all heard (hopefully) that Christopher Columbus mistreated the natives he encountered, that slaveowners mistreated their slaves, that 150 years ago everyone mistreated women and the poverty-stricken, but it is a different thing to have that reality all laid out for you in great detail, with historical documents to back it up.
That being said, this is basically a textbook, not a pleasure read, and it is a very, very, very one-sided textbook, at that. Zinn has quite a soft spot for labor unions, socialists and anarchists, and no sympathy at all for imperialists, businessmen, or basically anyone who has ever been in a position of great power in America, and he tries to beat that point of view into the reader’s head, too. It got a little old.
I would encourage anyone to at least pick up this book and skim through a couple chapters. You can learn a lot from it, but don’t be surprised if getting to the interesting bits is a bit of a slog.
"Quotidienne" by Petticoat Sass 