History from below

One of my New Year's resolutions for 2019 was to read Howard Zinn's magnum opus A People's History of the United States. Since the book is about 650 pages long (not including the notes/bibliography/etc), I decided that instead of doing it all at once, I'd read 50 pages a month, plus the additional 50 whenever I felt like it.

 

The first version of this book was published in 1980, so a lot of the stuff that was really groundbreaking or not common knowledge then has become somewhat more common knowledge now, and the general idea of writing "history from below" isn't quite so unheard-of. That said, it's still a pretty good read, and I did learn quite a lot from it--apparently my leftist U.S. history knowledge wasn't as thorough as I thought it was. Some of the terminology is a bit dated--Zinn uses "Indians" for Native Americans, and frequently uses "blacks" as a noun--but that's pretty clearly a style thing and not an attitude thing.

 

Even at nearly 700 pages, the book is very overview-y in a lot of places, which is probably to be expected given that it's covering nearly 500 years of history (it starts with Columbus' invasion of the Bahamas). That said, there's still room for lots of excerpts from primary sources! These are really the most fun part, since it's mostly not pompous presidents and generals that are quoted, but ordinary workers, soldiers, activists, and students. When there are quotes by famous people, they're not the ones you see in most other K-12 history textbooks--for example, Zinn skips the Helen Keller finger-writing inspiration porn to instead quote her adult writings as a socialist and disability activist, and as a suffrage-skeptical feminist.

 

Howard Zinn is buried in Newton, and now that I have lots of spare time I am planning on capping off finishing this book with a visit to his grave, just as soon as it stops raining.