A People's History - First time reader's reaction

[YankeyMCC]

So...I'm an avid reader of American History yet I've never picked up one of Mr Zinn's books. Not a conscious thing just fell out that way with my sporadic somewhat random selection process.

Finally I picked up "A People's History"

I'm only 100 pages in and already I have to say this is an extraordinary book. It's too early for me to tell how much of his view (or at least his presentation of American History) in this book I accept but it is already challenging me and forcing me to seriously consider and reconsider what I thought and felt about the settlement of North America by non-natives and the founding of the USA.

Which of course makes it a very good read regardless of how much I do or do not end up incorporating it's ideas and views.

Something like this should be required reading for all American students.

Just pitching in my 2 cents.

[5X]

1. Agreed, excellent read, but I won't give away the ending. n/t

[acmejack]

2. Wait till you get to the good part!

[Options Remain]

3. That book floored me when I read it.

I have my own copy for my daughter when she starts history classes.

[JitterbugPerfume]

4. the first time I read that book

I felt like my eyes were wide open for the first time in my life

It is that profound

[pstans]

5. Thanks for posting

My brother has a master's in history. I told him I was reading Zinn. He said that he never read him, but downplayed Zinn as a lefty liberal. My brother is a Democrat, but more moderate than I am. Your post might just make me give him the book to read.

[Spider Jerusalem]

6. My own opinion of the book...

is that it works well as polemic, but as a work of history is is seriously and deeply flawed. Zinn never once examines underlying causes of the things he writes about, he ignores complex social and political realities in favour of simplistic mythologising...his view of American history is that it is essentially static, not dynamic; to him, it is a dialectic that goes nowhere, a frozen tableau of a spoiled aristocrat with his boot on the neck of a peasant.

It works extremely well in forcing the reader to challenge his assumptions regarding what he knows about American history, but due to Zinn's shortcomings as an historiographer it doesn't go very far in presenting a coherent alternative.

[Kiouni]

7. one of the best

book i have ever read, his views on what america should do are really wonderful. Supprisingly though a friend of mine told me Zinn was a terrible speaker! disapointing