Letters from Tomis

Book Review

Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005.

Few works of American historiography have wielded as much political influence—or sparked as much pedagogical revolution—as Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. First published in 1980, the book emerged as a thunderous counter-narrative to mainstream historical writing. While many traditional texts traced the “Great Men” arc of U.S. history—Jeffersonian idealism, Manifest Destiny, industrial progress—Zinn inverted the lens. He made workers, women, Indigenous peoples, enslaved Africans, immigrants, and dissenters the protagonists of the American story. In doing so, he not only rewrote history but reclaimed it as a living, class-conscious tool for struggle.

Zinn, a historian with firsthand experience in civil rights organizing and antiwar activism, rejected the notion of objectivity as neutrality. Instead, he foregrounded a radical epistemology: that all history is written from a standpoint, and his would be that of the oppressed. A People’s History is not merely a revisionist project; it is an insurgent one. Zinn marshals archival sources, court documents, newspapers, and first-person testimonies to expose the contradictions between America’s founding ideals and its actual practices—from the genocide of Native peoples and the brutality of chattel slavery to imperial wars and corporate oligarchy.

What makes the book enduringly powerful is its structural commitment to Marxist-inflected materialism without ever lapsing into jargon. Zinn’s prose is lucid, democratic, and urgent. Each chapter builds upon a fundamental dialectic: the consolidation of ruling-class power and the response of grassroots resistance. Whether examining the post-Reconstruction betrayal of Black Americans, the rise of industrial capitalism and its attendant strikes, or the Vietnam War’s anti-imperialist resistance, Zinn never allows the official narrative to stand unchallenged.

In chapter after chapter, Zinn foregrounds class conflict as the engine of historical transformation. His reading of the American Revolution, for example, emphasizes that while it displaced British authority, it preserved a class structure that excluded most Americans from political and economic power. Likewise, his depiction of the New Deal situates it not as a benevolent gift from the Roosevelt administration, but as a necessary concession to mass labor unrest and socialist agitation in the 1930s. Such analyses restore to the reader an understanding of history as contested terrain—a site of ongoing struggle rather than passive inevitability.

From a socialist academic standpoint, one of Zinn’s greatest contributions is his ability to fuse historiography with praxis. The book does not merely inform—it radicalizes. By highlighting hidden rebellions, suppressed voices, and working-class victories (however partial or short-lived), Zinn’s work becomes a primer in historical consciousness. His account of labor radicalism—from the Wobblies to wildcat strikes—offers young readers an introduction to the often-erased genealogy of American socialism and anarchism. His treatment of U.S. foreign policy, particularly in the 20th century, draws heavily from anti-imperialist critiques, offering a structural understanding of capitalism’s global violence that resonates with thinkers from Lenin to Angela Davis.

Critics from the liberal and conservative establishment have long attacked Zinn for being “polemical” or “one-sided,” but these critiques often miss the point. Zinn never pretended to neutrality—he aligned himself with what he called “the countless small actions of unknown people,” and it is precisely this ethical and political clarity that makes the book indispensable. The historian is not, in Zinn’s view, an aloof chronicler, but a participant in the shaping of public memory and collective will. In this sense, A People’s History aligns with the tradition of radical historians such as E.P. Thompson, CLR James, and Herbert Aptheker, for whom the telling of history is a revolutionary act.

Moreover, Zinn’s influence can be measured not just in academic citations but in classroom transformations. A People’s History has become a pedagogical tool that encourages students to ask whose voices are missing from textbooks, to interrogate the narratives of patriotism and progress they are fed, and to recognize their own agency in history’s unfolding.

In the current moment—marked by rising authoritarianism, racial violence, economic inequality, and ecological crisis—Zinn’s work is more relevant than ever. His insistence that “the future is an infinite succession of presents” reminds readers that change is not only possible but imperative, and that the masses have always played the decisive role in pushing history forward.

Conclusion

A People’s History of the United States is a towering achievement of radical historiography. It transforms the study of American history from a tale of triumph to a battlefield of class and resistance. From a Marxist, pro-socialist standpoint, it serves as both a critique of bourgeois ideology and a call to arms for those who believe history must be reclaimed by the people who lived it—and who are still fighting to change it. It is not just a book—it is a revolutionary act, written in ink and indignation.