Rethinking America's Past

No introductory work of American history has had more influence over the past forty years than Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, which since its publication in 1980 sold more than three million copies. Zinn's iconoclastic critique of American militarism, racism, and capitalism has drawn bitter criticism from the right, most recently President Trump, who denounced Zinn as a Left propagandist and accused teachers aligned with Zinn of indoctrinating students to hate America and be ashamed of its history. Rethinking the American Past: Howard Zinn's The People's History of the United States in the Classroom and Beyond is the first work to use archival and classroom evidence to assess the impact that Zinn's classic work has had on historical teaching and learning, and upon American culture. This evidence refutes Trump's charges, showing that rather than indoctrinate students, Zinn's book has been used by teachers to have students debate and re-think conventional versions of American history. Rethinking the American Past also explores the ways Zinn's work fostered deeper, more critical renderings of the American past in movies, on stage and television, tracing the origins, and assessing the strengths and weaknesses, of A People's History in light of more recent historical scholarship-- American militarism, racism, and capitalism has drawn bitter criticism from the right, most recently President Trump, who denounced Zinn as a Left propagandist and accused teachers aligned with Zinn of indoctrinating students to hate America and be ashamed of its history. Rethinking the American Past: Howard Zinn's The People's History of the United States in the Classroom and Beyond is the first work to use archival and classroom evidence to assess the impact that Zinn's classic work has had on historical teaching and learning, and upon American culture. This evidence refutes Trump's charges, showing that rather than indoctrinate students, Zinn's book has been used by teachers to have students debate and re-think conventional versions of American history. Rethinking the American Past also explores the ways Zinn's work fostered deeper, more critical renderings of the American past in movies, on stage and television, tracing the origins, and assessing the strengths and weaknesses, of A People's History in light of more recent historical scholarship"--