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4.26 AVERAGE
4.26 AVERAGE
informative
medium-paced
As someone well versed in the deep woke arts, much of it is like yeah war is still bad, lots of racism and sexism and all that. Lots of good anecdotes I didn’t know though!
After going through centuries of poor people losing and dying it would be nice if there were a chapter or two dedicated to successes and hope.
Def a good addition to traditional history to get a fuller picture.
After going through centuries of poor people losing and dying it would be nice if there were a chapter or two dedicated to successes and hope.
Def a good addition to traditional history to get a fuller picture.
informative
medium-paced
challenging
informative
sad
medium-paced
Long but incredibly informative. Any errors or disagreements were trivial. Wish I’d read Zinn years ago. Would highly recommend.
Buckle in this is gonna be a long one. I’ve had this on my TBR for years and I started the audiobook in early June. Before I finished the first chapter, I’d ordered a paperback copy and switched to reading it physically. I knew almost immediately that I wanted to take my time with this one, to take notes, to take in the information slowly and digest it fully - and I’m so glad I took this approach. I often tout books as “required reading” for one reason or another, but this above all others is the book I believe everyone (Americans) should be required to read in their lifetimes.
I often think back to try to figure out when I was radicalized. After thinking about it for weeks, I finally realized that, of course, it wasn’t one isolated event. It happened at 20, when I got harassed at work by my superior and didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want to lose my job. It happened at 13, when I discovered punk rock music for the first time and I learned that I could and should use my voice to speak out against injustice. It happened at 23, when I told someone I was worried about my then newly ex-boyfriend’s harassment, and they told me I was overreacting. It happened at 11, the first time I heard someone call my childhood best friend the N-word in a fight at school. It happened at 19, when I voted against a known racist and rapist, then watched him win in my first ever election…and then I watched the same felon be elected again eight years later, this time at 27.
More importantly than these things that I’ve experienced personally, I’ve spent my life watching injustices. We all have. Watching both blatant and societal racism, sexism, homophobia, aporophobia, etc. in the news, in the media, and in our day to day lives. We’re, in real time, seeing fascism infect the collective consciousness of the US like a disease. We’ve watched black men and women be flippantly murdered by police. We see people every day who are unable to afford, or lack access to, healthcare, childcare, and/or basic necessities. We’ve seen violent military backlash to valid, legal, and peaceful protests. We’ve seen countless cases of children and adolescents being brutally murdered at school by perpetrators with assault rifles. We’ve watched thousands of people lose their families, friends, and homes to genocide. We’ve watched the rich take the opportunity at nearly every turn to become richer, at the expense of other people and our planet. We’ve seen civilians and the climate become collateral damage to the insatiable war machine. We’ve watched a convicted felon, rapist, pedophile, racist, con-man, misogynist, liar become the President of the United States of America. Twice. We’ve seen the blind eye the world turns to the suffering and silenced majority. This, more than anything, is what radicalized me.
When I first went to college, and in the decade since, I’ve spent much of my time trying to educate myself. Not just because I am fascinated by history (though I obviously am), but because I grew up to understand I hadn’t been taught it. Not the real stuff. Everything I learned in my lower education was not necessarily an outright lie (although much of it is), it was something even more sinister imo, lying by omission. Allowing the horrors of the realities of fascism, colonization, slavery, capitalism, war, genocide, industrialization, etc. to slip away into the recesses of our collective memory, by pushing a well trodden “heroic” narrative through the combination of governmental interference, propaganda, and omission or outright removal of the truth. This is the crux of the perspective Howard Zinn takes in this, his magnum opus, A People’s History of the United States.
Although much of the information in this book is not necessarily new to me (I’m not a historian by any stretch, but America hasn’t been around that long), I know American history fairly well, but this fresh perspective made for an immensely interesting, harrowing read. Zinn takes the reader on a journey that begins with Spanish colonization and the African slave trade, and travels through the twisted often deceitful and deplorable tale of United States imperialism, ending on the precipice of a new American era and a Forever War that was started for, what else? But the sake of making the rich richer. Zinn does a masterful job at laying out the history chronologically, while simultaneously citing and drawing connections through the passage of time. The narrative felt was easy to follow, and didn’t read like name salad imo. The unique additional perspective of being able to read this book 30 years after publication is equal parts chilling and fascinating, and I enjoyed that added viewpoint.
Of course, bias exists in all people, this is pretty obviously a left leaning book which I guess may bother you if you don’t align that way. I mean, if you’re under any delusion that the US isn’t like evil….this might not be for you - In any case, it has merit purely based on its immense amount of research and resources cited.
I often think back to try to figure out when I was radicalized. After thinking about it for weeks, I finally realized that, of course, it wasn’t one isolated event. It happened at 20, when I got harassed at work by my superior and didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want to lose my job. It happened at 13, when I discovered punk rock music for the first time and I learned that I could and should use my voice to speak out against injustice. It happened at 23, when I told someone I was worried about my then newly ex-boyfriend’s harassment, and they told me I was overreacting. It happened at 11, the first time I heard someone call my childhood best friend the N-word in a fight at school. It happened at 19, when I voted against a known racist and rapist, then watched him win in my first ever election…and then I watched the same felon be elected again eight years later, this time at 27.
More importantly than these things that I’ve experienced personally, I’ve spent my life watching injustices. We all have. Watching both blatant and societal racism, sexism, homophobia, aporophobia, etc. in the news, in the media, and in our day to day lives. We’re, in real time, seeing fascism infect the collective consciousness of the US like a disease. We’ve watched black men and women be flippantly murdered by police. We see people every day who are unable to afford, or lack access to, healthcare, childcare, and/or basic necessities. We’ve seen violent military backlash to valid, legal, and peaceful protests. We’ve seen countless cases of children and adolescents being brutally murdered at school by perpetrators with assault rifles. We’ve watched thousands of people lose their families, friends, and homes to genocide. We’ve watched the rich take the opportunity at nearly every turn to become richer, at the expense of other people and our planet. We’ve seen civilians and the climate become collateral damage to the insatiable war machine. We’ve watched a convicted felon, rapist, pedophile, racist, con-man, misogynist, liar become the President of the United States of America. Twice. We’ve seen the blind eye the world turns to the suffering and silenced majority. This, more than anything, is what radicalized me.
When I first went to college, and in the decade since, I’ve spent much of my time trying to educate myself. Not just because I am fascinated by history (though I obviously am), but because I grew up to understand I hadn’t been taught it. Not the real stuff. Everything I learned in my lower education was not necessarily an outright lie (although much of it is), it was something even more sinister imo, lying by omission. Allowing the horrors of the realities of fascism, colonization, slavery, capitalism, war, genocide, industrialization, etc. to slip away into the recesses of our collective memory, by pushing a well trodden “heroic” narrative through the combination of governmental interference, propaganda, and omission or outright removal of the truth. This is the crux of the perspective Howard Zinn takes in this, his magnum opus, A People’s History of the United States.
Although much of the information in this book is not necessarily new to me (I’m not a historian by any stretch, but America hasn’t been around that long), I know American history fairly well, but this fresh perspective made for an immensely interesting, harrowing read. Zinn takes the reader on a journey that begins with Spanish colonization and the African slave trade, and travels through the twisted often deceitful and deplorable tale of United States imperialism, ending on the precipice of a new American era and a Forever War that was started for, what else? But the sake of making the rich richer. Zinn does a masterful job at laying out the history chronologically, while simultaneously citing and drawing connections through the passage of time. The narrative felt was easy to follow, and didn’t read like name salad imo. The unique additional perspective of being able to read this book 30 years after publication is equal parts chilling and fascinating, and I enjoyed that added viewpoint.
Of course, bias exists in all people, this is pretty obviously a left leaning book which I guess may bother you if you don’t align that way. I mean, if you’re under any delusion that the US isn’t like evil….this might not be for you - In any case, it has merit purely based on its immense amount of research and resources cited.
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Like Zinn says, in a world where history is primarily biased to the winners of war and the elites of business, we needed something that was biased towards the people
fast-paced
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Frederick Douglass
Let America be America again. Langston Hughes
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in a final sense a theft from those who are hungry and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. Dwight Eisenhower
Let America be America again. Langston Hughes
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in a final sense a theft from those who are hungry and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. Dwight Eisenhower
informative
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
informative
proof that conservatives have never been on the right side of history
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced