The Twentieth Century: A Peoples History by Howard Zinn

The Twentieth Century: A Peoples History Reviews

• 
  Steffan

  Yes, I read this book because of the reference to it in Good Will Hunting. And yes, it knocked me on my ass. How do you like dem apples?
• 
  Mike

  Professor Zinn and I have vastly different political beliefs but I'm going to discuss his book and not his politics right up until the end. This is an abridgement of Zinn's A People's History of the United States that only covers the 20th Century. Apparently, according to Zinn, the 20th Century didn't begin until the 1960s and then everyone protested a lot of things. Zinn makes the point of describing the "people" from the title by saying 1% of Americans control 45% of the wealth, the "people" are the other 99%. Zinn then goes on the talk about civil rights protestors, anti-war protestors, prison protestors, Indian protestors, and on and on, so in reality, the "people" are the 1% of the population who protest. The other 98% are forgotten about, I assume because they have jobs and don't have time to protest. [return][return]Zinn also misuses data to make his points, for example, comparing incomes between two groups but only converting one into 2004 dollars. He also assumes meanings to events that are not really there. For instance, in discussing the 1992 election, he states that 19% of voters were unhappy with the choices given by the two major parties and protested against the choices they were given by voting for Ross Perot. As unlikely as it seems, I would be willing to bet the a fair number of people who voted for Perot did so because they wanted to vote for him and not as a protest against the other candidates. These are just a few examples of issues I had with this book. I say book, but it was actually an audio book, so I should probably say CDs. The reason I mention that is I said at the start that I was not going to discuss Zinn's politics until the end, which would be now. [return][return]While I agree with some of what Zinn said I still had a hard time finishing the book (CD) and actually I didn't finish it. I made it to the last CD when Zinn started talking about poor oppressed Mumia Abu-Jamal and how he was sentenced to death because the government wanted to shut him up, no mention of the crime he committed or of the cop he killed. At that point I hit the eject button and if the CDs hadn't belonged to the library, I would have chucked them out the window onto 95. Damn Communist Bastard.
• 
  Chris

  Again, this was another book that changed my views of the world. Its the history of our bad deeds of the US and its people. But understanding that going in, it'll show you the silent side of our history without making you hate our country. Very dense, but still a must read.
• 
  Rachel

  Although I don't agree with everything Professor Zinn says, this is an extremely compelling read and presents a different point of view than I imagine most kids get in American schools (I attended extremely liberal schools in an extremely liberal state, so not a lot of this history was new to me).
  
  However, the part of the book where Professor Zinn suggests we all destroy infrastructure and go live in utopian communes is, in my opinion, an extremely naive idea for a professor of history to have. I'm not extremely pro-capitalism or anti-socialism, but he completely ignores the history of human nature, and of people's attempts to live in such communes, when he suggests that we'd all be able to work a few hours a day, for the good of the community, and be able to spend the rest of the day off in our own intellectual pursuits. I've seen the commune system at work in China, North Korea, and the USSR, and it has NEVER worked out. For tiny divergent groups, it's probably fine; I don't ever see it working on a large scale.
  
  However, besides this rather crazy tangent of his, I really liked this book. There needs to be more histories that chart the existence and lives of the unrepresented; if history is written by the winners, we need to hear from the people who didn't win much more often than we ever do. My favorite part of this book was a quote, not by Zinn himself, that articulated something I've been feeling since we started the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; but I've never been able to say it so eloquently:
  
  "We are not hated because we practice democracy, value freedom, or uphold human rights. We are hated because our government denies these things to people in Third World countries whose resources are coveted by our multinational corporations. That hatred we have sown has come back to haunt us in the form of terrorism. Instead of sending our sons and daughters around the world to kill Arabs so we can have the oil under their sand, we should send them to rebuild their infrastructure, supply clean water, and feed starving children.
  
  In short, we should do good instead of evil. Who would try to stop us? Who would hate us? Who would want to bomb us? That is the truth the American people need to hear."
  
  --Former U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Robert Bowman, in Howard Zinn’s "A People’s History of the United States"
• 
  William

  There’s a sweeping galvanization; a wave of pathos that I feel in Zinn’s writing. While the work itself reads more as a treatise with tremendous and questionable bent, I give it 5 stars first for the sheer breadth of coverage and secondly for a wonderful bibliography of source texts from the underrepresented, ignored, and downtrodden of this nation.
  
  Most of the critiques and controversy lobbed at Zinn, from what I have seen, attack his very skewed retelling of events. Zinn himself acknowledges this, and responds with something I very much agree with: that objectivity is a ruse. All facts that are brought before you are the facts (and the commentary from those facts) based on what the presenter felt was important and worthy of your time. Other facts, and other perspectives on those facts, inevitably are left at the wayside. This isn’t because everyone is out to deceive you; it would simply take too long to have every person map out every perspective and every fact of a period and then write a cogent history through that. When people write history, they have implicit and explicit bias as to who they are choosing to read from, what sources they have available to them or know about, etc. Howard Zinn states very clearly that all he is trying to do is even the scales; with textbook upon textbook and thesis upon thesis based in the same perspective of the victors, the generals, the leaders and the businessmen, it can begin to feel like there aren’t any other perspectives. This book is intended to be their dark mirror; to leave out what they include and include what they leave out. Perhaps if we can find a way to hold all of these things in a creative tension we will be better able to forge a path ahead for all of us.
• 
  Derek

  Required reading to have any intelligent conversation about the country.
• 
  Jessica Harn

  Such an important rewriting of American history through the people's movements and early socialist thinking. Should be required reading
• 
  Kristal Stidham

  This is a nice treatment of all the history you don't learn in textbooks - from the perspective of the minority groups that caused the change or were affected by it. I knew most of the information about the Black Rights movement and Native American struggles because I've read books about them and visited associated historic sites, but the rest was quite new to me. American suffragettes, gays/lesbians, war objectors, and prisoners are just some of the groups that should be covered better in school, but who's stories are really only found in detail here.
  
  The audio version of this book is read by Matt Damon. His is the perfect voice for an intelligent, thought-provoking few hours of politics and drama.
• 
  Monica

  This book was incredibly biased, without identifying itself as so. The author, at one point, refers to Bill O'Reilly as "as popular TV personality", and implied that his statements reflected the mood of the entire country.
  
  There were some interesting points, but the author ignores so many contributing factors that it's almost impossible to read. When talking about prisoner's rights, for instance, he only talks about protesters that are arrested, he doesn't acknowledge the fact that a lot of the people in prison are dangerous people, and have their rights restricted because they've done atrocious things.
• 
  Molly

  This man is my hero, and opened up my eyes to the idea of balanced history. You have to accept the bad and shameful parts of our past if you really want to say that you love this country. That's something I still struggle with, but reading Zinn never fails to remind me of all the strides we've made, and how it was the small and seemingly insignificant people that brought about those changes.
• 
  Ramesh

  My second reading was as powerful as the first. There is page after page of history not taught, probably not even approved to be taught in our schools and way too much to include here. What bothers me the most is that it's somehow subversive or un-American to learn our history from all points of view.
• 
  Michael Anderson

  I found this book fascinating, particularly America’s brush with socialism, the differences in the ways conservatives and progressives handled the threat, and the seeming current growth of conditions that may cause a repeat of history. I never learned any of this in school, sad to say.
• 
  Jaclyn

  In the classic (read: indecipherable) Jaclyn rating scale, I learned a ton and found his writing, for the most part, compelling. It also made me really, really mad, so that'll usually get you a 5. I'll probably go back and read the full People's History having now read this excerpt.
• 
  Linda Stewart

  I've read bits and pieces of Zinn's book only in the last few years. Why wasn't he included in my history courses?
• 
  Nick

  This is like the liberal answer to reader's digest, not a history book.
• 
  Maggie Cox

  one of the most important books ive read. american history is just greed - imperialism and capitalism, driven by simple and poisonous greed. i love the call to action in the 3rd to last chapter
• 
  Sarah Rigg

  This took me over 2 months to finish. It's not a hugely long book, but it covers so much territory that it was hard to read and digest more than 8 or 10 pages at a time. Zinn is unabashedly biased and spins a socialist take on the historical events of the 20th century. I didn't buy into all his opinions and spin on events, but it did make me think a lot about how, no matter who is in power, the working person is basically shafted. Zinn has a background in civil rights and protest, and his writing is best when he covers those topics. I think he did a great job with racial civil rights, including the Native American rights movement, and he did a decent job with prison reform and feminism. I thought it was odd that he didn't do GLBT rights as well- he did mention them, but it was very much in passing compared to the sections on women's rights and Jim Crow, etc. I like to read things occasionally that are challenging to my mindset and current beliefs, and I appreciated the book very much for that reason.
  
• 
  Byunghwan "Ben" Son

  In a nutshell, the twenties century was really the idea that 'there has always been the oppression of the state on the people(s) both within and outside the country but the people persisted' was repeating itself many times. I am not sure if I agree entirely with the optimism, albeit cautious, that it's getting better and the people will eventually prevail. At least in the current context. I'd love to see what Dr. Zinn would've commented on the democratic backsliding unfolding around the world, had he been still with us. RIP.
• 
  Morgan

  I read this book in college. BOY OH BOY its a hard one but its the best on the market. What I mean is the book is dry and dense and hard to get through but when segmented reading is provided throughout it by an instructor the quick recap and info provided on the topics and history are reverent and assistive.
• 
  Erik

  an eye opening book and a prescient author. encourages patriotism in the people and potential of our country if critical of its leadership.
• 
  Alice

  As Zinn states, this is a book only about the people's perspective of US history. In such it is quite biased but since we have history books for the "other" side, it's not a problem.
• 
  Sean Queen

  I really enjoyed the perspective, yet it seemed disjointed at times because it was not linear within the chapters.
• 
  Jackie

  Uneven but also probably a little on me since this is a hard time to read Zinn!!
• 
  Lexi

  The audiobook, read by Matt Damon with some additions by the author, is riveting. At times despairing, it also brings hope, highlighting the wins, the small steps toward a better America.
• 
  Katie

  3.5 stars
• 
  Meghan

  I learned stuff!