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Review
| Voices of a People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove, eds. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2004. 672 pages. $18.95, paper.
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| One of the virtues of Howard Zinn's bestselling A People's History of the United States is its copious inclusion of primary-source quotations. The present companion volume handily pulls together excerpts from the documents from which many of those quotations are drawn. In compiling it with Anthony Arnove, Zinn sought to give "the voices of struggle, mostly absent in our history books,...the place they deserve," so that readers might "experience how at key moments in our history some of the bravest and most effective political acts were the sounds of the human voice itself" (p. 28). Paralleling A People's History, this collection proceeds chronologically from Columbus's expedition to "Bush II and the 'War on Terror.'" Each of its twenty-four chapters is organized around a broad topic, some broader than others, that together cover the recurring struggles of Indians, blacks (slave and free), women, workers, and antiwar activists. Brief chapter introductions provide barebones historical context for the documents that follow, while still briefer individual introductions provide minimal information on the specific sources themselves. |
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The selections mirror Zinn's longstanding deep commitment, which he discusses in the book's introduction, to "awaken[ing] a great consciousness of class conflict, racial injustice, sexual inequality, and national arrogance" in American history, and to highlight the resistance of the seemingly powerless "against the power of the establishment" (p. 28). Thus three chapters deal exclusively with class conflict; five together focus on the oppression and resistance of blacks and Indians; two highlight struggles against sexual discrimination; and seven deal all or in part with wars waged by the United States on foreign soil. This work not only complements and enriches A People's History, it also adds to the small body of recently published source readers related to American radicalism/reform. Especially refreshing is Zinn's stress on words themselves as effective political actions. The "people," this rightly implies, have not only efficacy but also an intellectual history—language and ideas—worthy of study. Indeed, to study one is necessarily to study in part the other. Also welcome is the space—eight chapters—devoted to protest post-1945. |
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For teachers of American history at both the high-school and college levels, this book offers interesting pedagogical possibilities. It can and will, of course, be fruitfully paired with Zinn's already widely-assigned historical narrative. It might also be revealingly assigned alongside an orthodox American history textbook, with students required to compare and contrast the interpretive framework governing each book and to think about how they would revise the textbook in light of the documents they have read. One can even imagine a successful course—whether an introduction to American history or a survey of American radicalism/reform—built entirely around Voices as the sole required reading. However it is used in the classroom, even if paired with A People's History, students will desire and require some elaboration on both the contexts and the authors of specific documents. Most of the sources have individual, named authors, several of whom will be well known or at least familiar to students. Endnotes supply full bibliographic information for each text. |
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As a whole, this collection reveals a persistent popular resistance to oppressive power throughout American history—one that defies easy generalizations about ideology, strategy, and tactics, and whose voices not infrequently, if unwittingly, testify as much if not more to the power of the powerful as to the efficacy of the people. Whether Zinn and Arnove intend the last two points they do not say. Revealingly, perhaps, the book ends with two documents jarringly different in outlook and tone: author Kurt Vonnegut's dark 2004 essay, "Cold Turkey," which concludes that America will never become "humane and reasonable" because "our leaders are power drunk chimpanzees" (p. 618), and musician Patti Smith's optimistic 1988 song, "People Have the Power," which she sang in protest against the (now) still ongoing Iraq War. Many of the voices represented here are those of activist-leaders, raising—for teachers and students alike—the problem of to what extent the leaders' words reflect views held by those for, and to, whom they spoke. Regardless, readers will likely come away at once sobered, inspired, and generally impressed with the eloquence, passion, and bravery of the voices within. This book has much to teach students about the enduring history of American protest by affording them a chance to work out directly with a wide range of primary sources that are, as Zinn suggests, one of that tradition's most important legacies. |
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| Gustavus Adolphus College |
Gregory L. Kaster |
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