A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

America is a nation that is often glorified in textbooks as a nation of freedom, yet history shows a different, more radical viewpoint. In Howard Zinn’s A People's History of the United States, we take a look at American history through a different lens, one that is not focused on over glorifying our history, but giving us history through the eyes of the people. “This is a nation of inconsistencies”, as so eloquently put by Mary Elizabeth Lease highlights a nation of people who exploited and sought to keep down those who they saw as inferior, reminding us of more than just one view on a nation’s history, especially from people and a gender who have not had an easy ride.
In some respects, we can attribute the founding of America and all its subsequent impacts to Christopher Columbus. Columbus a hero in the United States, has his own holiday and we view as the one who paved the way for America to be colonized. However, people tend to forget the other side of Columbus, the side that lusted after gold and resources that often belonged to the native inhabitants he came across in his exploration. In his insatiable greed, he and his crew committed countless atrocities, such as torture and killing of defenseless natives. Columbus’s discovery of these new lands contributes profound and negative effects as future colonists arrived. “Zinn estimates that perhaps 3 million people perished in the Caribbean alone from raids, forced labor and disease” (Zinn, 1980). Columbus was seen as a cruel man, who saw the peaceful inhabitants as right for the conquering and lead to the devastation of the native population, yet is celebrated every October.
Often in history textbooks the British are casted in an evil light, while the American colonist are se...

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...ay from certain races, people, or women. This wouldn’t be quite as terrible, but the hypocrisy of promising rights to all, where everyone is created equal and then doing the exact opposite makes the matter worse. Women, natives, the poor, and black had to fight countless years just to be on the same level as their oppressors, with some taking much longer to gain anything close to equality. If there’s one thing that Howard Zinn’s shows us, is that America is not as great as portrayed and some of our great American heroes are quite monstrous and supports Mary Elizabeth Lease’s opinion that “this is nation of inconsistencies.”

Works Cited

Declaration of independence. (1776, July 4). Retrieved from http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html

Zinn, H. (1980). A people's history of the united states. (2003 ed.). New York, NY: HarperCollins.