A People's History of the United States - my review

[gridlore]

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Good grief, if you weren't pissed off before. . .

This is a history of our nation with all the glory stripped off, the high ideals we get taught in schools sanded away, and all the concepts that this is a fair and equal nation stripped off and tossed in the junk pile. This is a history of the people who actually build this nation, bled for it, and died to make it. The workers, be they slaves, indentured servants, or just the average working class.

It is also the story about how, from the founding of Jamestown, the scales have been tipped towards the rich. This book examines without mercy the treatment of Indian tribes, especially when they began taking in runaway slaves and servants. It turns a cold eye on the real reasons behind the Revolution, and how the Constitution was by the rich, of the rich, and for the rich. It is an endless litany of massacres of anyone who defied the order, Black, White, or Indian; and how every attempt to organize labor was met with violence from the state.

It's disgusting. It's engrossing. And every American should read it.



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