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

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Yollam Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-06-06 08:42 PM
Original message
"A People's History of the United States" Howard Zinn
Edited on Tue Jun-06-06 08:44 PM by Yollam
If you haven't read this book, you owe it to yourself to do so.

If you don''t have the money or the wherewithal to go get it at a library or bookstore, you can read the whole thing online.

http://historyisaweapon.com/zinnapeopleshistory.html


It begins thusly:

Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress

by Howard Zinn

Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their villages onto the island's beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts. He later wrote of this in his log:

"They ... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned... . They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane... . They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."

These Arawaks of the Bahama Islands were much like Indians on the mainland, who were remarkable (European observers were to say again and again) for their hospitality, their belief in sharing. These traits did not stand out in the Europe of the Renaissance, dominated as it was by the religion of popes, the government of kings, the frenzy for money that marked Western civilization and its first messenger to the Americas, Christopher Columbus.




And that pretty much set the tone for America's development for the next 400 years.



(Emphasis is mine)

Enjoy.
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WindRavenX Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-06-06 08:44 PM
Response to Original message
1. this book changed my life
And has made me angry as hell.

America is fucked. Seriously. Fucked.
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LSK Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-06-06 08:45 PM
Response to Original message
2. i bought this book but i have to finish some others 1st
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TechBear_Seattle Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-06-06 08:53 PM
Response to Reply #2
5. Definitely make it a priority
It is quite the eye opener.
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parasim Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-06-06 08:49 PM
Response to Original message
3. Agreed.
That is, as far as I am concerned, the most important book on American history out there.
I bought the book-on-tape, too. Matt Damon narrates... it's perfect for those long drives...
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noamnety Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-06-06 08:51 PM
Response to Original message
4. My daughter got me this for Mother's Day
along with essays by Audre Lorde.

(coolest kid ever)

I'd been reading it in bits and pieces from the library, and even teaching from it a little, but didn't own the book and still haven't read the whole thing. Those two books along with Mike Davis: Ecology of Fear are on my list for this summer.
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UTUSN Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-06-06 09:01 PM
Response to Original message
6. K&R #4 for I'm up to WW I now
Edited on Tue Jun-06-06 09:11 PM by UTUSN
I had gotten stuck because the paperback paper is thin and I couldn't used hi-liter for bleeding through. I canNOT perform without hi-liting. I was having to read each chapter then go back and do underlining with a ruler. So there was this hi-liter that said is "Will Not Bleed Through"----and it turned out to be crayon-like. Please, to hi-liter-haters, no bickering---thanks.

The chapters on the Indians, women, Blacks---oh, heck, just about every one---are incredibly moving.

This one on the Mexican Attack could just as well be about the Iraq attack------and it bears on the Minutemen today. And the atrocities in the Phillippines during the Spanish-American Attack could, too.

*********QUOTE**********

From, A People’s History of the United States by Howard ZINN (paperback)

p. 149: We take nothing by conquest, thank God

…. “Violence leads to violence, and if this movement of ours does not lead to others and to bloodshed, I am much mistaken.“ ….

p. 150: In the White House now was James Polk, a Democrat, an expansionist, who, on the night of his inauguration, confided to his Secretary of the Navy that one of his main objectives was the acquisition of California. His order to General Taylor to move troops to the Rio Grande was a challenge to the Mexicans. ….

Ordering troops to the Rio Grande, into territory inhabited by Mexicans was clearly a provocation. ….

p. 151: “A corps of properly organized volunteers…would invade, overrun, and occupy Mexico. They would enable us not only to take California, but to keep it.” It was shortly after that, in the summer of 1845, that John O’Sullivan, editor of the Democratic Review, used the phrase that became famous, saying it was “Our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.” Yes, manifest destiny.

All that was needed in the spring of 846 was a military incident to begin the war that Polk wanted. ….

The Mexicans had fired the first shot. But they had done what the American government wanted, according to Colonel Hitchcock, who wrote in his diary, even b efore those first incidents: “I have said from the first that the United States are the aggressors…. We have not one particle of right to be here….”

P. 152: Polk recorded in his diary what he said to the cabinet meeting: “I stated … that up to this time, as we knew, we had heard of no open act of aggression by the Mexican army, but that the danger was imminent that such acts would be committed. ….

The country was not “excited and impatient.” But the President was. …. Polk spoke of the dispatch of American troops to the Rio Grande as a necessary measure of defense. As John Schroeder says (Mr. Polk’s War): “Indeed, the reverse was true; President Polk had incited war by sending American soldiers into what was disputed territory, historically controlled and inhabited by Mexicans.”

Congress then rushed to approve the war message. “The disciplined Democratic majority in the House responded with alacrity and high-handed efficiency to Polk’s May 11 war recommendations.” …. p. 153: Debate on the bill providing volunteers and money for the war was limited to two hours, and most of this was used up reading selected portions of the tabled documents, so that barely a half-hour was left for discussion of the issues.

The Whig party was presumably against the war in Mexico, but it was not against expansion. ….Also they were not so powerfully against the military action that they would stop it by denying men and money for the operation. They did not want to risk the accusation that they were putting American soldiers in peril by depriving them of the materials necessary to fight. The result was that Whigs joined Democrats in voting overwhelmingly for the war resolution, 74 to 4. ….

In the Senate, there was debate, but it was limited to one day, and “the tactics of stampede were there repeated,” according to historian Frederick Merk. The war measure passed, 40 to 2, Whigs joining Democrats. …

Abraham Lincoln of Illinois was not yet in Congress when the war began, but after his election in 1846... …. …His “spot resolutions” became famous--he challenged Polk to specify the exact spot where American blood was shed “on the American soil.” But he would not try to end the war by stopping funds for men and supplies. …. …he said, “…The declaration that we have always opposed the war is true or false, according as one may understand the term ‘oppose the war.’ …. The marching an army into the midst of a peaceful Mexican settlement, frightening the inhabitants away, leaving their growing crops and property to destruction… ….With few individual exceptions, you have constantly had our votes here for all the necessary supplies….”

p. 154: Accompanying all this aggressiveness was the idea that the United States would be giving the blessings of liberty and democracy to more people. This was intermingled with ideas of racial superiority, longings for the beautiful lands of New Mexico and California, and thoughts of commercial enterprise across the Pacific.

p. 156: The churches, for the most part, were either outspokenly for the war or timidly silent. ….However, one Baptist minister, the Reverend Francis Wayland, president of Brown University, gave three sermons in the university chapel in which he said that only wars of self-defense were just, and in case of unjust war, the individual was morally obligated to resist it and lend no money to the government to support it.

p. 157: As the war went on, opposition grew. ….The abolitionists, speaking through William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator, denounced the war as one “of aggression, of invasion, of conquest, and rapine--marked by ruffianism, perfidy, and every other feature of national depravity…” ….

p. 158: Where was popular opinion? It is hard to say. After the first rush, enlistments began to dwindle. The 1846 elections showed much anti-Polk sentiment, but who could tell how much of this was due to the war? ….

p. 160: We know much more about the American army--volunteers, not conscripts, lured by money and opportunity for social advancement via promotion in the armed forces. …. At first there seemed to be enthusiasm in the army, fired by pay and patriotism. … This initial spirit soon wore off. ….

p. 161: By late 1846, recruitment was falling off, so physical requirements were lowered, and anyone bringing in acceptable recruits would get $2 a head. Even this didn’t work. …. And soon, the reality of battle came in upon the glory and the promises. ….

p. 163: Meanwhile, by land and by sea, Anglo-American forces were moving into California. …. It was a separate war that went on in California, where Anglo-Americans raided Spanish settlements, stole horses, and declared California separated from Mexico--the “Bear Flag Republic.”

p. 165: After Taylor’s army took Monterey (Mexico) he reported “some shameful atrocities” by the Texas Rangers, and he sent them home when their enlistment expired. But others continued robbing and killing Mexicans. ….The U.S. bombardment of the city (Vera Cruz) became an indiscriminate killing of civilians. ….

p. 166: It was a war of the American elite against the Mexican elite, each side exhorting, using, killing its own population as well as the other. …. P. 167: As often in war, battles were fought without point. …”He had originated it in error and caused it to be fought, with inadequate forces, for an object that had no existence.” ….

p. 168: “Although they had volunteered to go to war, and by far the greater number of them honored their commitments by creditably sustaining hardship and battle, and behaved as well as soldiers in a hostile country are apt to behave, they did not like the army, they did not like war, and generally speaking, they did not like Mexico or the Mexicans. …. The glory of the victory was for the President and the generals, not the deserters, the dead, the wounded. ….

p. 169: Mexico surrendered. There were calls among Americans to take all of Mexico. The Treaty… llll just took half. ….The United States paid Mexico $ million, which led the Whig Intelligencer to conclude that “we take nothing by conquest….Thank God.”

**********UNQUOTE*************
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petgoat Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-07-06 01:00 AM
Response to Reply #6
12. It seems Zinn knows a thing or two about arranging a
justification for agressive war. He has signed the 9/11 Truth Statement.

http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20041026093059633


He's also signed the WorldCantWait statement. October 5 may seem like a long way
off, but it will be here before you know it.



http://www.worldcantwait.net/


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degreesofgray Donating Member (226 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-06-06 09:03 PM
Response to Original message
7. I read A People's History
my senior year in college. I read a little each night for one month, after I had finished studying for my classes/goofing off/getting high. I also recommend another Zinn book, Failure to Quit.
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OnionPatch Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-07-06 12:03 AM
Response to Original message
8. A great recommendation!
That book is a treasure. History written from the "little guy's" point of view, highlighting America's labor and civil rights movements and issues. I learned so much from this book. For instance, I had no idea there was a significant anti-war movement against WWI.
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Selatius Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-07-06 12:14 AM
Response to Reply #8
10. That's because Woodrow Wilson made sure it was driven underground
He was as authoritarian if not more so than Bush is today. The only difference is Wilson had the Espionage and Sedition Acts instead of the Patriot Act to use against anti-war protesters and socialists/labor leaders.
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Selatius Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-07-06 12:12 AM
Response to Original message
9. They gave us tokens of peace and friendship, we gave them war and misery
And history is forgotten.
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Pachamama Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-07-06 12:22 AM
Response to Original message
11. And that's the nice part..as one continues reading about what CC did next,
the reader learns about how Columbus and his men raped and slaughtered the people, hacking them to bits in many cases. After just the first chapter alone, you'll never want to "celebrate" Christopher Columbus weekend EVER.

I guess with "beginnings" like this, our future was destined to have blood on it....

BEST BOOK EVER...a must read for truthseekers...
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Yollam Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-07-06 06:15 AM
Response to Reply #11
13. Yep, and he even chiseled one of his crew out of the reward money...
...for being the first to spot land. The man was an all-around scumbag. I have no idea why the US tried to rehabilitate his image by establishing a holiday and a sanitized mythology about his "discovery" of the Americas. They should have done a holiday for Leif Ericson, who was a saint by comparison. But he didn't "discover" anything, he was the first Old Worlder to visit the New World. The New World was already populated.
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hippywife Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-07-06 06:41 AM
Response to Original message
14. Yep! I've said it before
and I'll say it again. Best book I've read in all my 47 years. Changed my life and the way I look at history.
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malaise Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-07-06 07:11 AM
Response to Original message
15. It's a classic
and should be required reading in schools.
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Habibi Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-07-06 07:16 AM
Response to Original message
16. This has become one of my favorite books
I read and re-read chapters at random. Last night I read the chapter on the Clinton presidency. Hoo-boy, Zinn cuts him no slack.

But, it does make one sad about this country.
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rman Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-07-06 07:18 AM
Response to Original message
17. Readings From Zinn's "Voices of a People's History of the United States"
highly recommended:

Democracy Now
Readings From Howard Zinn's "Voices of a People's History of the United States"

Monday, December 26th, 2005
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/26/160202&mode=thread&tid=25

Monday, February 20th, 2006
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/20/148251&mode=thread&tid=25

(video, audio)

Today we spend the hour with readings from a Voices of a People's History of the United States edited by historian Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove. It is the companion volume to Zinn’s legendary People’s History of the United States – which has sold over a million copies.

We will hear dramatic readings of speeches, letters, poems, songs, petitions, and manifestos. These are the voices of people throughout U.S. history who struggled against slavery, racism, and war, against oppression and exploitation, and who articulated a vision for a better world.

Speakers include Danny Glover, Marisa Tomei, Floyd Red Crow Westerman, Sandra Oh, and Viggo Mortensen.
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Douglas Carpenter Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-07-06 07:23 AM
Response to Original message
18. good book
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Scriptor Ignotus Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jun-07-06 12:30 PM
Response to Original message
19. I'm halfway through
and highly recommend it for everyone. It really shows how rah-rah and vague our classroom textbooks are on a variety of sensitive subjects (Indian genocide, slavery, class warfare, etc.).
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