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A review by savaging
A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
5.0
"My point is not to grieve for the victims and denounce the executioners. Those tears, that anger, cast into the past, deplete our moral energy for the present. And the lines are not always clear. In the long run, the oppressor is also a victim. In the short run (and so far, human history has consisted only of short runs), victims, themselves desperate and tainted with the culture that oppresses them, turn on other victims."
A note on the final chapters: Zinn is a better historian than prophet. In the last chapters, when he tries to pick out which social movements at the time are doing the important work, he spends a lot of ink on groups that seem pretty irrelevant to me now, and doesn't mention movements that have grown and remained relevant since the book was published.
A note on the final chapters: Zinn is a better historian than prophet. In the last chapters, when he tries to pick out which social movements at the time are doing the important work, he spends a lot of ink on groups that seem pretty irrelevant to me now, and doesn't mention movements that have grown and remained relevant since the book was published.