A People's History of the United States

By: Howard Zinn

Narrated by: Jeff Zinn

Length: 34 hrs and 8 mins

Publisher's summary

"A wonderful, splendid book - a book that should be ready by every American, student or otherwise, who wants to understand his country, its true history, and its hope for the future." (Howard Fast)

For much of his life, historian Howard Zinn chronicled American history from the bottom up, throwing out the official version taught in schools - with its emphasis on great men in high places - to focus on the street, the home, and the workplace.

Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, A People's History of the United States is the only volume to tell America's story from the point of view of - and in the words of - America's women, factory workers, African-Americans, Native Americans, the working poor, and immigrant laborers. As Zinn shows, many of our country's greatest battles - the fights for a fair wage, an eight-hour workday, child-labor laws, health and safety standards, universal suffrage, women's rights, racial equality - were carried out at the grassroots level, against bloody resistance.

Covering Christopher Columbus' 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.

©2009 Howard Zinn (P)2009 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic reviews

"Zinn's work is a vital corrective to triumphalist accounts." ( Publishers Weekly)

The Truth is Important

Loved it. It just feels so right,,even if it's bad, to be told the truth!

Its like the ACLU and the NAACP wrote a book

What did you like best about A People's History of the United States? What did you like least?

some interesting facts along the way

Has A People's History of the United States turned you off from other books in this genre?

absolutely not

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

VERY slow narration. I had to speed it up to make it tolerable

Was A People's History of the United States worth the listening time?

Not a complete waste of time but could have been better.

Any additional comments?

It should be titled A Negative History Against the United States. Just a little too jaded towards the African American history for me. I understand the struggles but it just seems to beat it into you at every possible moment.

its good but...

caugh at ch 11 time:37:38 seems like a fail to not cut. Otherwise I would recommend.

Excellent and accurate

The raw and uncensored history of United States. Fare warning it will enrage you… Enjoy!

A Lighthearted Romp Through History

Made me laugh. Made me cry. Highly recommended as a children's bedtime story. Maybe just leave it playing on a Bluetooth speaker for your precious little one while you're laying in bed, trying to figure out where life went wrong, and you never feel quite as secure as you're told you should feel.

Leftist AF

I get it, the mainstream narrative is BS, but countering with an opposing, but equally skewed, viewpoint is just as bad.

history is always written by the winners

absolutely rattled by this audiobook. cant tell you how happy i am that it exists

Important book, tedious at times

The information in this book is so important and though written decades ago, sadly still relevant and timely. However, I have two main complaints: 1. It is sometimes redundant, repeating information already expressed in another section. This isn’t terrible, but maybe could have been avoided. 2. The narration is great in terms of expressive tone and pace, but there are very many mispronounced words, especially of names and places. I feel like it is a narrator‘s job to research the correct or most commonly accepted pronunciation of a name or place name, and there should be some kind of editing that catches these mistakes. This was true of place names that are admittedly challenging such as Puyallup and Salish, but also commonly known names of war heroes, battlefields, Indian tribes (New Perce, Salvador Allende) or common ethnic names like Vasquez or Chavez, etc.

A third, more minor irritation was that in the audio version I wish when citing a source the narrator would say “according to“ or at least “in“ because it is jarring when you are listening to something to have the title of a book dropped at the end of a quote or sentence.

Overall this is an important book for everyone and is worth investing the time to read or listen to.

This is the other side of the coin

The truth is when you say look at both sides and you come up with your actual belief. read this it will open your mind and it should educate you on how vital you are to defend the Constitution from where you stand. no illusions keeping it, real understand who you are where you come from where you want to take everybody to. need to listen to this book whether you agree with it or not

over and over

kind of went on and on and on ... great history .. did learn a lot