Voices of a People's History of the United States
by Howard Zinn, Anthony Arnove
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Book Summary Information
Author: Anthony Arnove, Howard ZinnEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-10-05
ISBN: 1583226281
Number of pages: 665
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Book Reviews of Voices of a People's History of the United States
Book Review: A strong intellectual perturbation
Summary: 5 Stars
History is sometimes written with the goal of documenting the attitudes or opinions of a particular class of people, such as the intellectuals, the politicians, the scientists, or the warriors. Each of these groups has made important contributions to human accomplishment, which should not be forgotten or discarded under the guise of some egalitarian or multicultural reading of history. But when the stories of these groups are documented in history, too often other voices are deafened, and these voices represent the vast majority of historical participants. It is not enough to view history through the eyes of intellectuals, politicians, or warriors. For an historical account to be meaningful, it must offer insight into the collaborations, opinions, belief structures, and longings of those who chose not to become famous, but instead chose to indulge themselves in the unique fascinations that each historical epoch possesses.
But because most humans throughout history did not record their experiences, the historian is left wanting for accurate appraisals of these experiences. Diaries, journals, and other personal writings can assist the historian in this regard, and there have been many uses of these throughout the historical literature. It is important to remember though that because of the paucity of these personal documents, one should not be too hasty in imputing the opinions of their authors to the entire population at the time. One cannot view them as representing the "voices of the people" without establishing this with (difficult) statistical analysis.
Sometimes however these documents were written more as a catharsis, as a way of expressing, in a strong and determined way, an idea, grievance, or opposition to the status quo. The opening quotation in the book by Frederick Douglass reinforces this view, for in that quotation Douglass essentially states that power must be challenged before it can be defeated (Douglass does not want to stop with mere words though, for in the same quotation he asserts the need for physical confrontation if necessary).
It is in this light that this book should be read. It is a collection of essays and letters that reveal attitudes that are not the typical ones that one would be exposed to in United States secondary schools. Those readers familiar with the author's earlier book on United States history will appreciate this book even more, but both can be read independently of each other. This is not a book that will please the elitist historian who discounts any view of history that does not magnify the contributions of intellectuals or military leaders over and above the "common" person. It is a book for those who are genuinely interested in the moods and aspirations of the people of a given time, if only from a limited vantage point. It will certainly upset the intellectual equilibrium of anyone who holds to a view of American history that has been sanitized by the educational establishment.
Summary of Voices of a People's History of the United States
Here in their own words are Frederick Douglass, George Jackson, Chief Joseph, Martin Luther King Jr., Plough Jogger, Sacco and Vanzetti, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Mark Twain, and Malcolm X, to name just a few of the hundreds appearing in Voices of a People?s History of the United States , edited by Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove. Paralleling the 24 chapters of Zinn?s A People?s History of the United States , Voices of a People?s History is the long-awaited companion volume to the national bestseller.
For Voices , Zinn and Arnove have selected testimonies to living history?speeches, letters, poems, songs?left by the people who make history happen, but who usually are underrepresented or misrepresented in history books: women, Native Americans, workers, blacks and Latinos. Zinn has written short introductions to the texts, which themselves range in length from letters or poems of less than a page to entire speeches and essays that run several pages and longer. Voices of a People?s History is a symphony of our nation?s original voices, rich in ideas and actions, an embodiment of the power of civil disobedience and dissent, wherein lies our nation?s true spirit of defiance and resilience.
Beloved historian and activist Howard Zinn is the author of the best-selling A People?s History of the United States and many other books, including The Zinn Reader (Seven Stories Press 2000), Artists in the Time of War (Seven Stories Press, 2003) and Terrorism and War (Seven Stories Press 2002).
Anthony Arnove is the editor of Terrorism and War by Howard Zinn, and Iraq Under Siege . An activist and regular contributor to ZNet, his writing has appeared in The Nation , The Financial Times and Mother Jones . He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Howard Zinn is famous primarily for A People's History of the United States, the book in which he presented alternative versions of American milestones, including Columbus's "discovery" of the New World. Voices of a People's History of the United States is the follow-up to that original landmark work, but where People's History contained Zinn's interpretations of events, Voices turns the platform over to others, in a collection of first-hand accounts, journal entries, speeches, personal letters, and published opinion pieces from the nation's history.
The purpose of Zinn's work, Voices included, is to engage in an act of political dissidence and activism. "What is common to all of these voices," Zinn and co-editor Anthony Arnove write in the book's introduction, "is that they have mostly been shut out of the orthodox histories, the major media, the standard textbooks, the controlled culture ... to create a passive citizenry." With Voices, Zinn and Arnove seek to address that malaise, showing that the impossible--slaves rising up against their slave masters, for example--is not only possible, but has occurred repeatedly throughout the country's history. "Whenever injustices have been remedied, wars halted, women and blacks and Native Americans given their due," they write, "it has been because 'unimportant' people spoke up, organized, protested, and brought democracy alive." The common thread throughout Voices is this mandate, and each selection is preceded by a brief introduction by the authors, written from a far-left perspective. (As an example, one section is titled "The Carter-Reagan-Bush Consensus.")
Voices often works better as a reference book than a sit-down-to-read title. Its early chapters--on Columbus, slavery, the War of Independence, and the early women's movement--tend to be more engaging than later excerpts, largely because a contrary point of view to mainstream mythology has been so rarely heard. The modern sections have a haphazard, "greatest hits of the left" feeling, as the book jumps from an Abbie Hoffman speech to the lyrics of Public Enemy's "Fight the Power." The problem may be inherent in the format of the book. Everything is treated equally, and a speech by Danny Glover is given as much weight as an excerpt from W.E.B. DuBois's The Souls of Black Folk. For context and background, it's best to stick with the original People's History, but to hear the words right from the speakers' mouths, there's no better resource than Voices. --Jennifer Buckendorff
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