Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, A People’s History tells U.S. history from the point of view of — and in the words of — America’s women, factory workers, African-Americans, Native Americans, the working poor, and immigrant laborers.

As historian Howard Zinn shows, many of our country’s greatest battles — the fights for a fair wage, an eight-hour workday, child-labor laws, health and safety standards, universal suffrage, women’s rights, racial equality — were carried out at the grassroots level, against bloody resistance. Covering Christopher Columbus’s arrival through President Clinton’s first term, A People’s History of the United States features insightful analysis of the most important events in U.S. history.

Library Journal calls Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States “a brilliant and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those. . . whose plight has been largely omitted from most histories.” Packed with vivid details and telling quotations, Zinn’s award-winning classic continues to revolutionize the way U.S. history is taught and remembered.

The book has appeared in popular media, like The Sopranos, The Simpsons, Good Will Hunting, Lady Bird, and the History Channel documentary The People Speak. [Publisher’s description.]

More than two million copies sold.

The 35th anniversary edition, published in November of 2015, includes a new introduction by Anthony Arnove. He begins,

Howard Zinn fundamentally changed the way millions of people think about history with A People’s History of the United States. He would be the first to say, however, that he didn’t do so alone. The book grew out of his awareness of the importance of social movements throughout U.S. history, some of which he played an active role in during the 1960s and 1970s and beyond, namely the Civil Rights Movement, mass mobilizations to end the Vietnam War, as well as other antiwar movements, and the many movements for higher wages and workers’ rights and the rights of women, Latinos, Native Americans, gays and lesbians, and others.

ISBN: 9780062397348 | HarperCollins

Teacher Quotes

As a teacher, the Zinn Education Project website is invaluable because it provides activities that directly relate to A People’s History. Last week we did The People vs. Columbus, et al. which places all the parties involved in the arrival of Columbus on trial for the murder of the Tainos. The activity was so interactive that teachers from other classrooms had to ask us to quiet down. Students were able to better understand the motives and consequences behind the arrival.

Even though A People’s History can be a bit difficult for some students, the activities on the Zinn Education Project website makes the content accessible regardless of their reading level.

—Julian Hipkins III

HIgh School Administrator, Washington, District of Columbia

My first lesson as a student teacher was using an excerpt from A People’s History of the United States to teach about Columbus. I was working at Booker T. Washington Middle School in NYC. A student raised her hand and said, “Howard Zinn is my uncle!” I was honored, my hero’s niece! For Christmas, I got a signed copy!

—Francesca Miller

Teacher, New York, New York

More than thirty years ago, I had the pleasure of sitting next to Howard Zinn on a cross-country flight to check out graduate programs. Despite my being somewhat star-struck, he was one of those easy to “fall into conversation with” seatmates — kind, engaging, and interested in why I was traveling.

When I revealed that I was considering becoming a social studies teacher, he said “You must do that. The world needs teachers like the one you will be.” The voice of the universe had spoken and I have been a classroom teacher for the past thirty years, using parts of A People’s History of the United States and his inspirational approach to understanding the American experience.

—Annie Barnes

High School Humanities Teacher, Los Angeles, California

I grew up very trusting (too trusting) of the mainstream media and the accounts of our nations history from my textbooks. For years I was under the impression that the United States of America was the greatest nation in the world with no flaws — the epitome of democratic perfection. I would sing the national anthem proudly at baseball games and digest all the stories of our founding fathers that led me to idolization.

Then I read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and everything changed. I became more curious about who was writing the history and their motivations. I developed a lens by which to critically judge the events and accounts I read in newspapers and history books. I was more thoughtful about a mainstream version of our history informed how another might see the world differently than me.

His book was the catalyst — opening me to a deeper understanding of myself, my biases and how they manifested subconsciously into sexism, racism, classism, and other forms of intolerance. After doing more work, reading books like The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander and Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, I found my way with conviction into activism. Each day I do this work I feel increasingly more empowered to be an aware and mindful ally to the Movement for Black Lives and other movements who struggle to dismantle systems of violence and oppression.

—Brendan Orsinger

Organizer with the James Reeb Voting Rights Project, District of Columbia

I read A People’s History of the United States in the summer before my junior year of high school — fifteen years ago now. It was an interesting time. This would have been 2005-2006, so the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were well underway, and I was beginning to pay attention to what those around me were saying about war.

As I sat in Boston Common reading my paperback copy of A People’s History, I must have had dozens of people come up to me to tell me how much it had changed their lives. Some were former students, some were fans, some were college students reading Zinn for the first time. Howard Zinn gave me a gift — a radical awakening. His work has that kind of power. You don’t forget injustice easily, and he unearths the injustices the other textbooks would rather forget.

I had the distinct honor of meeting Zinn when he gave the opening remarks at an adaptation of Grace Paley’s work. For all that Zinn was — activist, educator, historian, pacifist, mensch — he reminded me of why our people fight for justice. I love the long, anti-capitalist, anti-white supremacist tradition he carried forward as a Jew. We are obligated by our religion to fight for all who are oppressed, and every time I read Zinn, I am graced with that reminder, and that memory.

I believe in the power of radical change through progressive education and fully support the work of the Zinn Education Project.

—Becky Eidelman

Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning Graduate Student, Boston, Massachusetts

I am an 8th grade Humanities teacher at Melrose Leadership Academy in Oakland.

I just finished chapter 4 of A People’s History of the United States on tyranny with my 8th graders, and I have never seen so many of my students engaged in discussion! One of my normally non-avid readers came up to me at the end of the class and said, “Ms. V, this is such an interesting book!”

I am so proud to be using Howard Zinn’s work! Thank you!

—Marisa Villegas

Middle School Humanities Teacher, Oakland, California

Because of this book, I understood early in my college career the importance of the true, unfiltered words of the actual actors in a historical event. As a result, I was drawn further into the study of history and, eventually, into my career as a history teacher. What A People’s History brought to my attention is that American history is much more interesting than that. Our history is an exciting, sometimes appalling, struggle for power and that makes us just like every other country that has ever existed.

A long list of “good guys” with no one to struggle with is neither a true story nor a good story. It doesn’t resonate because it leads the student to believe that we are all waiting for the next exceptional leader, instead of becoming a force for change in our own communities. A People’s History helped me recognize this as a student of history and inspires my attempt to bring true stories to young people, weary of the inaccessible lists that history teaching has become.

—Reynolds Bodenhamer

HIgh School Social Studies Teacher, Gulfport, Mississippi

In my first year of teaching 15 years ago, I was browsing local bookstores for resources that could supplement the textbook that I resented. I became a history teacher to help students make history a living part of their lives and the textbook seemed to have the opposite effect. I grabbed A People’s History of the United States and have yet to put it down.

The way in which Howard Zinn makes history compelling for students is undeniable and a resource that I have decided I — and my students — cannot be without. Many students who find themselves in alternative programs will often say that teachers never made school interesting. Zinn’s work gave me the resource I needed to capture the internal sense of justice so many urban students have. As an educator, I am filled with excitement that although I opened the window with the help of Howard Zinn, they have made the effort to examine what is outside.

—Dawn Fontaine

High School Social Studies Teacher, Springfield, Massachusetts

I have been a Howard Zinn fan since I picked up a copy of A People’s History when it first came out. I have cited it in more newspaper opinion columns than I can remember. I also quoted from it many times in my lectures at West Kentucky Community and Technical College, where I was on the faculty for 36 years. I recommended the book to my students. I still recommend the book to my union brothers and sisters — I’m the webmaster-editor for the Kentucky State AFL-CIO, a member of the state executive board and a retiree-member of AFT Local 1360. More than a few have bought copies of it.

—Berry Craig

Professor Emeritus of History, West Kentucky Community and Technical College, Louisville, Kentucky

Read more quotes from teachers about the impact of Howard Zinn and A People’s History of the United States on their work.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress
Chapter 2. Drawing the Color Line
Chapter 3. Persons of Mean and Vile Condition
Chapter 4. Tyranny Is Tyranny
Chapter 5. A Kind of Revolution
Chapter 6. The Intimately Oppressed
Chapter 7. As Long as Grass Grows or Water Runs
Chapter 8. We Take Nothing by Conquest, Thank God
Chapter 9. Slavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom
Chapter 10. The Other Civil War
Chapter 11. Robber Barons and Rebels
Chapter 12. The Empire and the People
Chapter 13. The Socialist Challenge
Chapter 14. War Is the Health of the State
Chapter 15. Self-help in Hard Times
Chapter 16. A Peoples War?
Chapter 17. Or Does It Explode?
Chapter 18. The Impossible Victory: Vietnam
Chapter 19. Surprises
Chapter 20. The Seventies: Under Control?
Chapter 21. Carter-Reagan-Bush: The Bipartisan Consensus
Chapter 22. The Unreported Resistance
Chapter 23. The Coming Revolt of the Guards
Chapter 24. The Clinton Presidency
Chapter 25. The 2000 Election and the “War on Terrorism”

The post A People’s History of the United States: 1492 – Present appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

The book spans history as it educates readers about the diverse range of people who both independently and collectively changed the world. Its final chapter, “The Future of Nonviolence,” stresses the importance of nonviolent activism and the limitless forms that this type of resistance can take — probing readers to look no farther than themselves for future ideas and new courses of action.

ISBN: 9781580891295 | Charlesbridge Publishing

About the Authors

Perry Edmond O’Brien is a former Army medic who served in Afghanistan and received an honorable discharge as a conscientious objector. He is the founder of www.peace-out.com, a website that helps servicemen navigate the conscientious objector application process. Perry majored in political theory at Cornell University and now works as a labor organizer in New York City.

Anne Sibley O’Brien was introduced to nonviolent resistance as a student at Mount Holyoke College, where she protested the Vietnam War in the 1970s. Since then she has joined marches, rallies, and campaigns for different causes. She has illustrated many picture books, including Talking Walls and other titles by Margy Burns Knight, and received the 1997 National Education Association Author-Illustrator Human and Civil Rights Award. She wrote and illustrated The Legend of Hong Kil Dong, winner of the Aesop Prize and the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. The mother of two grown children, Anne lives with her husband on an island in Maine.

The post After Gandhi: One Hundred Years of Nonviolent Resistance appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

“El profesor Zinn escribe con un entusiasmo que raras veces se encuentra en la sombría prosa de la historia académica. Su texto está adornado con citas de líderes laborales, gente opuesta a la guerra y esclavos fugitivos. Es una descripción vívida de acontecimientos usualmente ignorados. Es una inversión de perspectivas, una baraja de héroes y villanos.” — The New York Times Book Review

La obra de Howard Zinn ha inspirado a estudiantes y activistas de todas las edades, afirmando que la gente tiene el poder de cambiar la historia. En La otra historia de los Estados Unidos, la version definitiva en español del clásico de Zinn La historia del pueblo de los Estados Unidos, Zinn asume la narrativa típica de la historia americana y nos muestra la mentira que se esconde detrás de la historia “oficial” — revelando a Cristóbal Colón no como descubridor sino como asesino; los fundadores de la nación norteamericana no como liberadores sino como la fundación de una nueva elite adinerada — y a la vez aboga por héroes americanos alternativos, desde Bartolomeo de las Casas hasta Tecumseh y César Chávez, quienes desafiaron el poder norteamericano imperialista y vencieron.

Actualizado y ampliado incluyendo la presidencia de Bush, La otra historia de los Estados Unidos nos vuelve a recordar que la grandeza verdadera de America se encuentra no en los generales militares, sino en sus voces disidentes.

ISBN:  9781609803513 | Seven Stories Press

More resources for teaching people’s history in Spanish.

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500 Years of Chicana Women’s History offers a powerful antidote to this omission with a vivid, pictorial account of struggle and survival, resilience and achievement, discrimination and identity. The bilingual text, along with hundreds of photos and other images, ranges from female-centered stories of pre-Columbian Mexico to profiles of contemporary social justice activists, labor leaders, youth organizers, artists, and environmentalists, among others. With a distinguished, seventeen-member advisory board, the book presents a remarkable combination of scholarship and youthful appeal.

In the section on jobs held by Mexicanas under U.S. rule in the 1800s, for example, readers learn about flamboyant Doña Tules, who owned a popular gambling saloon in Santa Fe, and Eulalia Arrilla de Pérez, a respected curandera (healer) in the San Diego area. Also covered are the “repatriation campaigns” of the Midwest during the Depression that deported both adults and children, 75 percent of whom were U.S.-born and knew nothing of Mexico. Other stories include those of the garment, laundry, and cannery worker strikes, told from the perspective of Chicanas on the ground. From the women who fought and died in the Mexican Revolution to those marching with their young children today for immigrant rights, every story draws inspiration. Like the editor’s previous book, 500 Years of Chicano History, this thoroughly enriching view of Chicana women’s history promises to become a classic. [Publisher’s description.]

About the Editor: Elizabeth “Betita” Martínez is a widely known Chicana writer, activist, and lecturer. Now director of the Institute for Multiracial Justice in San Franciso, she has published six books, most recently De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century.

ISBN: 9780813542249 | Rutgers University

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Harrison envisioned a socialism that had special appeal to African-Americans, and he affirmed the duty of socialists to oppose race-based oppression. Despite high praise from his contemporaries, Harrison’s legacy has largely been neglected.

This reader redresses the imbalance; Harrison’s essays, editorials, reviews, letters, and diary entries offer a profound, and often unique, analysis of issues, events and individuals of early twentieth-century America. His writings also provide critical insights and counterpoints to the thinking of W. E. B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey.

The reader is organized thematically to highlight Harrison’s contributions to the debates on race, class, culture, and politics of his time. The writings span Harrison’s career and the evolution of his thought, and include extensive political writings, editorials, meditations, reviews of theater and poetry, and deeply evocative social commentary. [Publisher description.]

“With publication of this volume it will be possible to trace the evolution of Harrison’s thought for the first time ever. The appearance of Harrison’s writings will most certainly not only fill a gap in our understanding of black radical and nationalist writings around the World War I period and beyond, but will also, I suspect, change the way in which we tend to look at black thought generally in this period.” —Ernest Allen, Jr., W.E.B. DuBois Department of Afro-American Studies, UMass at Amherst

ISBN: 9780819564702 | Wesleyan University Press

 Slideshow Presentation and Talk

“Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism”

By Jeffrey B. Perry at the Dudley Public Library, Roxbury, Massachusetts, February 15, 2014

For additional material by and about Hubert Harrison see Jeffrey B. Perry’s website.

The post A Hubert Harrison Reader appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

“A witty and devastating portrait of U.S. military policy.” —Howard Zinn

“Political comics at its best. Bitterly amusing, lively and richly informative. For people of all ages who want to understand the link between U.S. militarism, foreign policy, and corporate greed at home and abroad.” —Michael Parenti

“Addicted to War is must reading for all Americans who are concerned with understanding the true nature of U.S. foreign policy and how it affects us here at home.” —Martin Sheen

ISBN: 9781849352178 | AK Press

The post Addicted to War: Why the U.S. Can’t Kick Militarism, An Illustrated Guide appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

Black Indians

The classic Black Indians has been updated and reissued. This startling and readable work of people’s history chronicles both the attempts to keep black people and Indians divided in the Americas, and their efforts to unite. As one French colonial document stated, “Between the races we cannot dig too deep a gulf.” But the “digging” was not always successful, and much of the drama of Katz’ book is found in the inspiring instances of black-Indian unity, as in the Seminole Wars.

Two lessons on the Zinn Education Project website draw on Black Indians: The Color Line, about conscious efforts in early America to create divisions between races; and The Cherokee/Seminole Removal Role Play, which helps students explore events leading up to the Trail of Tears.

The expanded and updated edition of Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage brings the Native American and African American alliance that for four centuries challenged the European conquest and slavery into the 21st century with additional research and documentary and photographic evidence.

The new edition reveals the story of the African guides and translators of the colonial era who became valued contacts with Indigenous peoples, examines the African and Indian alliance known as the Pueblo revolt of 1680 that ended Spain’s rule of the southwest for a dozen years, introduces Francisco Menendez and the 1738 Black Indian community that defended its liberty in Florida against British incursions, and describes the Lowry Gang in North Carolina that fought the Civil War Confederacy and then battled the KKK.

Lucy Gonzales Parsons

This edition also provides new information on how western African American pioneer women often took the lead in aiding Native Americans; the ironic role of the Black “Buffalo Soldiers” sent to fight the great Native American nations in the West, and those who refused.

Katz introduces readers to Lucy Parsons, a former enslaved Black Indian, and a brilliant, and fiery orator and writer who became a socialist revolutionary; and to militant Black Indian Congressman George Henry White who introduced the first anti-lynching bill in 1900. Readers will hear of both the debates and efforts toward unity started in the 1960s between Dr. Martin Luther King, Dick Gregory, Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), the American Indian Movement, and Black Power Movement, and between political prisoners Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Alice Walker called the original edition “usable, nearly lost, invaluable history . . . . A guide to the real America.”

John Hope Franklin said it was “a major contribution, particularly valuable because the subject has been overlooked.”

Will Pickett (left, with his brothers). Photo from Gerald Anderson from the Pickett family album.

Howard Zinn said it “digs up stories that have not been told, introduces us to people and events that have been shamefully ignored and does it all in clear, clean prose.”

Mumia Abu-Jamal said, “A remarkable book”. Perhaps if kids were taught this version of history, the mad dash of imperialism that marked much of the 20th century would not have occurred,” and Black Child Magazine said it was “a classic” whose “many rare, antique engravings and photographs help prove the author’s leading points.”

The photos on this page were provided courtesy of the author.

ISBN: 9781442446373 | Simon and Schuster

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For one, the largest column on each page is reserved for the primary sources. The authors’ text, which provides a context for the primary sources, is in a narrow column. For another, the text begins with a description of the life for the masses of people in Europe before the conquest.

This counters the images students usually get when the stories are limited to the lives of the kings and queens. Finally, the bulk of the book describes resistance throughout the Americas to the invasion and the ongoing seizure of land and people. There are sections on African American resistance, Indigenous resistance, Central American resistance and resistance today. Illustrated with many engravings, prints, line drawings and photos.

ISBN: 0963102605 | Chicago Religious Task Force | Out of print (available used).

The post Dangerous Memories: Invasion and Resistance Since 1492 appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

Clint Smith, author of How the Word Is Passed, writes in the foreword,

I opened a notebook, flipped to the first page of A Different Mirror, and began. Many hours later, as the summer sun had begun setting behind a thicket of campus trees, I was still there. I couldn’t stop. An endless succession of paragraphs had been underlined, hundreds of pages had been dog-eared, and my notebook was full of revelations, observations, arrows, and exclamation points. It was as if I had been thirsty my entire life and had finally been given water to drink. Takaki’s book was providing me with the tools I didn’t know I needed; it gave me a new historical framework with which to understand the landscape of American life.

I had previously read books that outlined the histories of particular ethnic groups, but I had never encountered a book that put the experiences of so many different types of Americans in conversation with one another. Under Takaki’s guidance, I was able to trace the intellectual throughlines that shaped Jefferson’s conception of Black American inferiority and Roosevelt’s belief in Japanese American disloyalty. I was able to establish clearer connections between the ideas that forced Native Americans off their land and those that brought in Chinese immigrants to build railroads across it. I was able to more fully understand the parallels of Mexican immigrants who generations ago had arrived at the southern border of the United States, and Irish immigrants who generations ago had arrive in the ports of Boston and New York.

With that said, one of the great strengths of A Different Mirror is that it does not allow comparison to slip into conflation. Takaki is careful as he threads his needle through history. He wants readers to understand the connections and overlapping histories that exist across different groups of Americans, but he is careful not to suggest that those histories are the same. It is the historical nuance and cultural dexterity with which Takaki writes that allows readers to make their own connections throughout the text. . . . .

Today we find ourselves in a moment when teaching history fully and accurately is being misrepresented by many as an ideological project rather than an honest one. There are state legislatures attempting to prevent teachers from teaching the very history that explains why our country looks the way that it does today. There are school boards banning books that provide students with perspectives from voices that are already on the peripheries of our country’s collective consciousness. It is more essential than ever that we have books that explain the history of this country in clear and forthright ways — books that don’t shirk from a certain part of history simply because some people might find it unsettling.

ISBN: 9780316499071 | Back Bay Books

A splendid achievement, a bold and refreshing new approach to our national history. The research is meticulous, the writing powerful and eloquent, with what can only be called an epic sweep across time and cultures. — Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States

The post A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

“Raphael relays so much forgotten or never-known history and argues so well why it, not the legends, should be remembered that virtually any American will profit from reading this lively, intelligent book.” —Booklist

“All students of American history will find Raphael’s correction of the historical record instructive and enjoyable.” —Publishers Weekly

“Ray Raphael’s Founding Myths makes great strides toward challenging conventional myths and broadening our understanding of American History. Raphael works within the interstices of American mythology to reveal the genealogy of fictional stories central to the American ‘founding.’ . . .  [He] reveals the highly myopic and provincial perspective that often shapes the American understanding of American history.” —Institute for Historical Review

For more information on this book and the author, visit: RayRaphael.com

ISBN:9781595589491 | New Press

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