A People’s History of the United States: 1492 – Present

Book – Non-fiction. By Howard Zinn. 2005. 702 pages.
Howard Zinn’s groundbreaking work on U.S. history. This book details the lives and facts that are rarely included in textbooks — an indispensable teacher and student resource.

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Since its original landmark publication in 1980, A People’s History of the United States has been chronicling American history from the bottom up.

Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, A People’s History is the only volume to tell America’s story 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 our history.

Library Journal calls Howard Zinn’s iconic 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 American history is taught and remembered. Frequent appearances in popular media, like The Sopranos, The Simpsons, Good Will Hunting, and the History Channel documentary The People Speak, testify to Zinn’s ability to bridge the generation gap with enduring insights into the birth, development, and destiny of the nation. [Publisher's description.]

Nominated for the American Book Award in 1981. More than two million copies sold.

“It’s a wonderful, splendid book—a book that should be read by every American, student or otherwise, who wants to understand his country, its true history, and its hope for the future.” —Howard Fast, author of Spartacus and The Immigrants

“[It] should be required reading.” —Eric Foner, for the New York Times Book Review

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. The Coming Revolt of the Guards

Published by HarperCollins.

ISBN: 9780060838652