⭐⭐⭐ People’s History of the US by Zinn
| Full Title | A People’s History of the United States |
| Authors | Howard Zinn |
| Year Published | 1980 |
| Date Read | August 20, 2025 |
| Rating | 3/5 stars |
| Retention | 70 Anki cards created |
I’ve read about half of this book slowly over the course of the last ~half year. I think this is a solid way to interact with it, for two reasons: one, the chapters are relatively self-contained, so you can sort of stop whenever and know that a reasonably-well-delineated section will be waiting for you. But the second reason is that the book gets relatively repetitive, which can be a pro and a con.
As a unabashed pro-American and pro-capitalist individual, a book like this cuts against alot of what I want to believe in. And I think in many cases it seems to me like Zinn uses a particular way of telling things that casts our history in a pretty negative light. But, if you’re picking up this book, I think you already know that going in, and I think in many cases I actually did learn something new that I previously had never heard of.
A couple examples that stuck out for me:
- While there was no federal-level draft durion the Revolutionary War, there were many state-level drafts and often you could pay your way to get out of it.
- Why did folks import people from Africa and enslave them, when they already had Native Americans here that could have been enslaved? Turns out, having a rebellious spirit, being on your own ‘turf’, and being susceptible to disease more easily are pretty big advantages when it comes to resisting enslavement.
Anyway the repetitiveness I mentioned helps to really drive whatever point is being made home and enables one to pick up reading wherever you left off. But it does make for relatively dry reading once you get the gist of things.
While I’m rating just three stars, I think that for folks interested in US history it is a good source to pick up even just to train the “I listen to things I don’t want to hear” muscle. For those that are less convinced of American dominance, you’ll probably find alot here that you’ll like.