A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present (P.S.)

The sad part is the ideas Zinn is so passionate about deserve to be expressed well and read by an even larger audience than he currently enjoys.

Had Zinn hooked up with a good writer this may well have been a good book. As it stands I can't help feel I am browsing wily nilly through stacks of index cards filled with quotes, facts, and observations from original and secondary sources pertaining to a particular view of U.S. history.

Now all someone has to do is organize all these cards into a book with, if we are lucky, a compelling narrative flow. That is a separate art from the collection of the index cards, something Zinn is very good at.

Currently the material is mind numbingly unorganized, repetitive, and verbose, which is a shame. Zinn's view of the primary forces that have shaped, and continue to shape our country deserve a better showing.

It's obvious this cat knew the kind of book he wanted to write before he started. He just needed the facts and data to back it up. A lot of this guy's opinions and conclusions are probably right. But it's hard to lend much credibility to a historian who grabs at so many straws. One thing I remember was he wrote about a riot in New York during the Civil War and stated that no actual number of deaths were ever recorded, but that this was the largest number of deaths ever in a case of domestic violence in America. Is that a guess then? I think that's around pg. 236, though I don't have it in front of me. One thing I do know is on pg. 193 he talks about the massacre at Fort Pillow, Kentucky. Dude, Fort Pillow is in Tennessee. If you can't even get a fact like that straight, how can I trust all the other less clear-cut things you present? Go ahead and read this if you want a non-typical book that doesn't rave about how great America's past was. Just don't put much stock in everything this guy tries to feed you.

This is a book that everyone should read & should be a requirement in all schools.

Wow! Just superb. It gave me the real, true perspective of the US. It was an eye opener for me. One of my top 3 reads of all time.

Thank you!

Amazing book. I am 63 years old and wish I'd been interested in american history sooner. I spent most of my life blindly believing the history of school textbooks. Howard Zinn blows the lid off of most of what I had accepted as gospel. This book certainly opened my eyes to what went on behind the scenes. We may not be bad people, but we've sure had some very bad leaders over the years, who made some very selfish decisions without regard to the long term effects of their actions. Three cheers for Howard Zinn.