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A People’s History of the United States summary

Name: A People’s History of the United States
Rating: 4 (253 reviews)
Author: Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn

A brilliant and moving history of the American people

4 (253 ratings)

35 mins

Brief summary

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn is a book that re-tells the country's history from the perspective of oppressed and marginalized groups, offering insight into the complex and often violent forces that have shaped American society.

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Black History US History

Table of Contents

A People’s History of the United States
Summary of 14 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 14

What’s in it for me? Learn the true American history.

America is the land of the free and the home of the brave, right? Well, according to Howard Zinn, it depends on who you ask. More often than not, history is written by victors, and the rich and powerful have consistently obscured the truth.

The fact of the matter is that the United States is a land built on pillage and plunder, racism and hatred, slavery and exploitation; it is a country that has, from its inception, been set up for the rich and powerful few to exploit the many.

The history of this nation is one of uprisings, standoffs, labor strikes and resistance. It is a tale of struggle and the fight of subjugated people, a tale that shines a powerful light on the contemporary world and the rampant inequality that plagues modern society.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

why the United States is always at war;
how labor unions began to take root in the United States; and
how corporations came to control the government.

The genocidal treatment of America’s native people has largely been ignored by popular historians.

For decades, American schoolchildren have been taught a lie: they have been told, year after year, about the heroic tale of Christopher Columbus, a courageous Italian who “discovered” America for the Spanish, opening the door to the “New World.” The United States even named a national holiday after the explorer, honoring his arrival on North American soil on October 12, 1492.

But when you take a closer look at Columbus’s journal, the tale begins to darken; it depicts a man with truly brutal intentions.

For instance, when describing the Arawak people he encountered in the Bahamas, Columbus wrote, “with 50 men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever.”

Unsurprisingly, that’s precisely what Columbus and the first Europeans did: they forced the native people to lead them to gold and, on the Caribbean islands where there were few natural resources to be found, they raided the native villages, raped women and put hundreds of the strongest Arawaks on boats bound for Spain, to live out the rest of their lives in slavery.

Others who failed to produce gold or copper had their hands cut off. Over a mere three-month period, 7,000 children died, by suffocation in mines, beheading or at the hands of their own mothers to prevent their capture.

So it was that by 1515, a population of 250,000 native people had been decimated, leaving only 50,000 survivors. By 1550, that number was just 500 and, by 1650, the Arawaks were no more.

But that’s not what you read when you open your run-of-the-mill history book or a biography like Christopher Columbus, Mariner. Published in 1954, this book is instead a riveting, romantic adventure piece.

What’s worse is that Columbus’s crimes against the Arawaks weren’t the half of it. The same thing happened in the seventeenth century, when English settlers landed in Virginia and Massachusetts. They completely annihilated the Powhatan and Pequot tribes, a genocidal act that has been framed by historians as “necessary” for progress.

It’s just one example of how history is often written from the perspective of the victors and subjugators. However, as Albert Camus once said, thinking people are responsible for taking the side and perspective of the victims, rather than the executioners – and the blinks that follow will do just that.

Native American resistance led Europeans to enslave Africans.

The Iroquois that lived in modern-day New York and Pennsylvania used to own land communally, which meant none of them were homeless. They were also agricultural experts and lived in a matrilineal society; in other words, women chose the men who would represent the tribe’s interests at meetings and, if a man made poor decisions, he would be replaced.

To their European colonizers, who considered women subordinate to men, such a custom was absurd. Furthermore, these Europeans expected the native people of America to submit to the colonial presence, just as they thought women should submit to men. When they didn’t, a destructive animosity erupted.

The US government was built for wealthy landowners and is controlled by them to this day.

Certain twentieth-century historians, like Ulrich Phillips, have falsely suggested that African people are naturally submissive. But the fact of the matter is that African slaves participated in uprisings from the very start of the slave trade.

For instance, in 1712, 21 slaves were executed in New York for planning a revolt that killed nine whites. Slave masters knew that their slaves’ spirits and natural will for freedom had to be crushed if slavery was to succeed.

Women suffered under terrible conditions in early American society, but soon began to organize.

While the US Constitution never even mentions women, that doesn’t mean that women at the time weren’t fighting to make their voices heard.

Before the American Revolution, women were intentionally isolated from one another, making it difficult for them to organize against a society that, at best, treated them with indifference and, at worst, like sex slaves and servants.

US expansion was secured through violence against Native Americans and Mexico.

Of the many subjects that elementary school history books gloss over, there may be none more explicitly ignored than the topic of American Indian removal and the wars against Mexico of the mid-1800s.

During this period, a series of treaties forced Native American tribes to the west. However, once the US government decided it wanted to continue expanding, these treaties were torn up and the tribes were pushed even further west, in a mass forced migration known as the “Trail of Tears.”

The Civil War was waged to maintain the status quo, not to end the horror of slavery.

Around the year 1860, just before Abraham Lincoln was elected president, palpable tensions were brewing between the North and South of the United States. In the North, bankers, manufacturers and elite businessmen wanted an economy that would uphold their interests; they advocated a free domestic market with high tariffs to protect against outside competition.

However, what was good for the manufacturers of the North was bad for the plantation owners of the South. The latter saw northern Republicans as unsympathetic to their needs and a threat to their way of life. When Lincoln was finally elected, it provided the spark to ignite this powder keg of animosity. The Southern states began to secede from the Union and a civil war broke out.

The 1800s saw the rise of a powerful labor movement.

Slaves may have secured their freedom, but as they did, they found themselves in a similar financial situation as poor and landless white tenant farmers. To the government, both groups were insignificant and, for freed slaves, their inability to vote meant they were even more subjugated.

But in the 1800s, tenant farmers started to realize that they had another option; they could form unions and improve their lives by standing together. After all, while one small farmer may be easy to exploit, thousands of united farmers are a different story.

Unions and democratic socialism grew during the industrial era.

In the 1800s, workers began to see how powerful striking was as a tactic – but not all strikes are successful. In fact, some end in tragedy.

For instance, during 1877, 100,000 railroad workers went on strike against lethal conditions and rock-bottom wages. The government called in 9,000 National Guard troops and, in the end, 100 workers were killed.

World War I highlighted the dishonesty and hypocrisy of the US government.

Do you know why the United States entered World War I? Well, Woodrow Wilson claimed it was because the Germans sunk the Lusitania, an ocean liner that was carrying American passengers. What Americans weren’t told at the time was that the ship was also transporting some 2,000 cases of small arms ammunition, 5,000 boxes of gun cartridges and 1,248 cases of three-inch shells.

Nonetheless, when Wilson spoke about the sinking of the Lusitania, he said that the United States “cannot consent to any abridgment of American rights.” He didn’t unveil the real reasons the United States was eager to enter the war, which were purely economic.

World War II caused US military expenditures to skyrocket – permanently.

If WWI was a prime example of US hypocrisy, WWII only continued this tradition. For instance, when black soldiers were sent to Europe on the Queen Mary, they were stowed in the bottom of the boat, right next to the engine. Was the treatment of African-Americans much different than the rampant anti-Semitism that existed in Germany at the time?

As it turns out, the president at the time, Franklin D. Roosevelt, certainly wasn’t preoccupied with German racism; rather, he was concerned with how a war with Japan would affect the US supply of key resources, such as rubber and tin.

US foreign policy has been dictated by economic interests and sold to the public through lies.

During the early 1960s, when speaking publicly about US activity in Vietnam, President John F. Kennedy said the country was working to “assist independence” in Vietnam, helping it break free from the communist regime that had seized power in the country.

However, in private meetings, his administration described interest in “rich exportable surpluses like rice, rubber, tea, corn, tin, spices, oil and many others.”

The government’s response to the civil rights movement was suppression rather than justice.

The Civil Rights movement, an iconic era of American social change, had been brewing for generations when Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in 1955. Her simple action ignited a bus boycott and a much broader social movement.

Other nonviolent protests spread across the country, like that of several black men who, in 1960, refused to leave the “whites only” lunch counter of a Woolworth’s department store until the store abandoned its racial segregation policy.

After the Vietnam War, the US government continued its deceptive military actions.

So, the US government has always crushed public dissent and consolidated power for the rich and the few – but by 1972, people were starting to catch on. For instance, a University of Michigan poll that same year asked people, “is the government controlled by a few big interests looking out for themselves?” A total of 53 percent of respondents answered “yes,” whereas in 1964, that number was only 26 percent.

Day by day it became clearer that the rules just didn’t apply to the establishment. Congressional approval was no longer necessary for the country to take military action.

The US continually oppresses the people of other countries to satisfy its capitalist greed.

In 1990, an aide for President George H. W. Bush was quoted in the New Yorker. His name was John Sununu and he said, “a short successful war would be pure political gold for the President and would guarantee his reelection.”

Then, on October 28 of the same year, the Washington Post reported that Republicans believed Bush would “initiate combat to prevent further erosion of his support at home.” These foreboding signs pointed to a decision that would change the world forever; on October 30, 1990, in an attempt to raise his approval ratings and increase US control of oil resources in the Middle East, Bush secretly approved Operation Desert Storm.

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What is A People’s History of the United States about?

A People’s History of the United States (2015, first edition 1980) walks you through the United States’ past from the perspective of the marginalized, the disenfranchised and the oppressed. These blinks describe a history of uprisings, protests and activism in the face of a government built for the rich.

A People’s History of the United States Review

A People’s History of the United States (1980) by Howard Zinn gives a fresh, alternative perspective on American history that is definitely worth reading. Here's why this book stands out:

It presents a counter-narrative to the traditional historical accounts, focusing on the struggles and perspectives of marginalized groups.
With its meticulous research and extensive use of primary sources, the book offers a comprehensive and unbiased analysis of historical events.
By highlighting the experiences of ordinary people, the book brings history to life, making it engaging and relatable for readers.

Best quote from A People’s History of the United States

Even Thomas Jefferson said that it doesnt suit women to wrinkle their foreheads with politics.

—Howard Zinn

Who should read A People’s History of the United States?

Activists and advocates of social change
Students of political science and US history
Readers looking for a fresh perspective on the US government

About the Author

Howard Zinn was an influential historian and social activist who wrote dozens of popular books on human rights, politics and social injustice. He taught political science at Boston University for many years before passing away of a heart attack in 2010.

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