A Young People’s History of the United States

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Howard Zinn, adapted by Rebecca Stefoff

Seven Stories Press (2009)

Paper • ISBN-13:9781583228692 • US $19.95 • 5.5 in x 8 in• 464 pgs.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

A Young People’s History of the United States brings to US history the viewpoints of workers, slaves, immigrants, women, Native Americans, and others whose stories, and their impact, are rarely included in books for young people. A Young People’s History of the United States is also a companion volume to The People Speak, the film adapted from A People’s History of the United States and Voices of a People’s History of the United States.

Beginning with a look at Christopher Columbus’s arrival through the eyes of the Arawak Indians, then leading the reader through the struggles for workers’ rights, women’s rights, and civil rights during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and ending with the current protests against continued American imperialism, Zinn in the volumes of A Young People’s History of the United States presents a radical new way of understanding America’s history. In so doing, he reminds readers that America’s true greatness is shaped by our dissident voices, not our military generals.

PRAISE:

“Zinn has written a brilliant and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those who have been exploited … the book is an excellent antidote to establishment history…While the book is precise enough to please specialists, it should satisfy any adult reader.”

Library Journal

“In many years of searching, we have not found one history book we would recommend to them—until [the] just published A Young People’s History of the United States. This is the edition of A People’s History that we have all been waiting for.”

Deborah Menkart, executive director, Teaching for Change

“Zinn’s work exemplifies an approach to history that is radical, regardless of its subject or geographical location. He tells us the untold story, the story of the world’s poor, the world’s workers, the world’s homeless, the world’s oppressed, the people who don’t really qualify as real people in official histories. Howard Zinn painstakingly unearths the details that the powerful seek to airbrush away. He brings official secrets and forgotten histories out into the light, and in doing so, changes the official narrative that the powerful have constructed for us. He strips the grinning mask off the myth of the benign American Empire. To not read Howard Zinn is to do a disservice to yourself.”

Arundhati Roy

“[Zinn] gives a real insight in to history that is often left out of text books. Highly recommended.”

Socialist Review

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

Howard Zinn (1922–2010) was a historian, playwright, and activist. He wrote the classic A People’s History of the United States, “a brilliant and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those … whose plight has been largely omitted from most histories” (Library Journal). The book, which has sold more than 2.6 million copies and been translated into 23 foreign editions, has become a cultural touchstone, encouraging interest in “people’s histories” in universities and activist meetings alike. In 2009, History aired The People Speak, an acclaimed documentary co-directed by Zinn, based on A People’s History and a companion volume, Voices of a People’s History of the United States. As Noam Chomsky wrote, “Howard Zinn’s work literally changed the conscience of a generation.”

Zinn grew up in a working-class, immigrant household in Brooklyn. At eighteen, he became a shipyard worker and flew bomber missions over Europe during World War II, experiences which helped to shape his opposition to war and his interest in the lives of working people. After attending college under the GI Bill and earning a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University, he taught at Spelman College, a historically black women’s college, where he became active in the civil rights movement. After being fired by Spelman for his support for student protesters, Zinn became a professor of Political Science at Boston University, where he taught until his retirement in 1988. He wrote more than forty books.

Rebecca Stefoff has devoted her career to writing nonfiction books for young readers. She has adapted a number of landmark works in history and science. Visit her website here: http://rebeccastefoff.com/