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A People's History of the United States
Howard Zinn
- 784 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
A People's History of the United States
Howard Zinn
About This Book
THE CLASSIC NATIONAL BESTSELLER
"A wonderful, splendid bookâa 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." âHoward Fast
Historian Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States chronicles American history from the bottom up, throwing out the official narrative taught in schoolsâwith its emphasis on great men in high placesâto focus on the street, the home, and the workplace.
Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, it is the only volume to tell America's story from the point of view ofâand in the words ofâAmerica's women, factory workers, African-Americans, Native Americans, the working poor, and immigrant laborers. As Zinn shows, many of our country's greatest battlesâthe fights for a fair wage, an eight-hour workday, child-labor laws, health and safety standards, universal suffrage, women's rights, racial equalityâwere 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.This edition also includes an introduction by Anthony Arnove, who wrote, directed, and produced The People Speak with Zinn and who coauthored, with Zinn, Voices of a People's History of the United States.
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1
Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress
They . . . brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawksâ bells. They willingly traded everything they owned. . . . They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features. . . . They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane. . . . They would make fine servants. . . . With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.
As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts.
Hispaniola is a miracle. Mountains and hills, plains and pastures, are both fertile and beautiful . . . the harbors are unbelievably good and there are many wide rivers of which the majority contain gold. . . . There are many spices, and great mines of gold and other metals. . . .
Marriage laws are non-existent: men and women alike choose their mates and leave them as they please, without offense, jealousy or anger. They multiply in great abundance; pregnant women work to the last minute and give birth almost painlessly; up the next day, they bathe in the river and are as clean and healthy as before giving birth. If they tire of their men, they give themselves abortions with herbs that force stillbirths, covering their shameful parts with leaves or cotton cloth; although on the whole, Indian men and women look upon total nakedness with as much casualness as we look upon a manâs head or at his hands.
large communal bell-shaped buildings, housing up to 600 people at one time . . . made of very strong wood and roofed with palm leaves. . . . They prize bird feathers of various colors, beads made of fishbones, and green and white stones with which they adorn their ears and lips, but they put no value on gold and other precious things. They lack all manner of commerce, neither buying nor selling, and rely exclusively on their natural environment for maintenance. They are extremely generous with their possessions and by the same token covet the possessions of their friends and expect the same degree of liberality. . . .
Endless testimonies . . . prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives. . . . But our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy; small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then. . . . The admiral, it is true, was blind as those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians. . . .
. . . mountains are stripped from top to bottom and bottom to top a thousand times; they dig, split rocks, move stones, and carry dirt on their backs to wash it in the rivers, while those who wash gold stay in the water all the time with their backs bent so constantly it breaks them; and when water invades the mines, the most arduous task of all is to dry the mines by scooping up pansful of water and throwing it up outside. . . .
Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides . . . they ceased to procreate. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and famished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desperation. . . . In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk . . . and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fertile . . . was depopulated. . . . My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write. . . .
He had his faults and his defects, but they were largely the defects of the qualities that made him greatâhis indomitable will, his superb faith in God and in his own mission as the Christ-bearer to lands beyond the seas, his stubborn persistence despite neglect, poverty and discouragement. But there was no flaw, no dark side to the most outstanding and essential of all his qualitiesâhis seamanship.
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Introduction by Anthony Arnove
- 1. Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress
- 2. Drawing the Color Line
- 3. Persons of Mean and Vile Condition
- 4. Tyranny Is Tyranny
- 5. A Kind of Revolution
- 6. The Intimately Oppressed
- 7. As Long as Grass Grows or Water Runs
- 8. We Take Nothing by Conquest, Thank God
- 9. Slavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom
- 10. The Other Civil War
- 11. Robber Barons and Rebels
- 12. The Empire and the People
- 13. The Socialist Challenge
- 14. War Is the Health of the State
- 15. Self-help in Hard Times
- 16. A Peopleâs War?
- 17. âOr Does It Explode?â
- 18. The Impossible Victory: Vietnam
- 19. Surprises
- 20. The Seventies: Under Control?
- 21. Carter-Reagan-Bush: The Bipartisan Consensus
- 22. The Unreported Resistance
- 23. The Coming Revolt of the Guards
- 24. The Clinton Presidency
- 25. The 2000 Election and the âWar on Terrorismâ
- Afterword
- Acknowledgments
- Bibliography
- Index
- P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
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