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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 of voices that appear in Voices of a People's History of the United States. This volume is identical in size and format to Zinn's A People's History, and the 24 chapters parallel the chapters in that book. Zinn writes short introductions to the texts, which range in length from letters or poems of less than a page to entire speeches and essays that run several pages or longer. Voices is a symphony of our nation's original voices, rich in ideas and actions, the embodiment of the power of civil disobedience and dissent wherein lies our nation's true spirt of defiance and resilience.

Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States tells the story of this country from the point of view of the people usually left out of history books-women, Native Americans, workers, blacks and Latinos. It has served to remind generations of Americans that democracy is fundamentally a conversation between people, one that has always been led by working people and those with the least to lose and the most to gain in a truly democratic society. Each year, A People's History is read by more people than the year before; recently, it sold its millionth copy.

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, and, most recently, Terrorism and War.

Anthony Arnove is the editor of Terrorism and War by Howard Zinn and Iraq Under Siege. An activist and regu-lar contributor to ZNet, his writing has appeared in The Nation, The Financial Times and Mother Jones.

Average Customer Rating:

Voice of A People's History of the United States	Customer Rating:
It's a good book, with a lot of collections of articles from history. But it'll be nicer if it has more of the author's own opinion

Howard Zinn's quest	Customer Rating:
Anyone interested in history, academically or otherwise, should read Zinn's work since history is written by the winners, the best fighters, the most arrogant, sonmetimes, the most patient. It would be wise for history teachers to present "the other side". I highly recommend his work.

You'll learn a few things	Customer Rating:
This account of the history of the US is taken from the "little people's" point of view. Very eye opening.

Incredible Resource	Customer Rating:
I am a high school history teacher and I use this in class. It has been extremely helpful especially combined with the free teacher's guide which you can find online. Each primary source is introduced with a brief background which provides some context.

A strong intellectual perturbation

Customer Rating:

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.