A Young People's History of the United States, Volume 1

A Young People’s History of the United States brings to US history the viewpoints of workers, slaves, immigrants, women, Native Americans, and others whose stories, and their impact, are rarely included in books for young people. A Young People’s History of the United States is also a companion volume to The People Speak, the film adapted from A People’s History of the United States and Voices of a People’s History of the United States.

Beginning with a look at Christopher Columbus’s arrival through the eyes of the Arawak Indians, then leading the reader through the struggles for workers’ rights, women’s rights, and civil rights during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and ending with the current protests against continued American imperialism, Zinn in A Young People’s History of the United States presents a radical new way of understanding America’s history. In so doing, he reminds readers that America’s true greatness is shaped by our dissident voices, not our military generals.

“In many years of searching, we have not found one history book to recommend…until the just published A Young People’s History of the United States. This is the edition of A Peoples History that we have all been waiting for.” — Deborah Menkart, Executive Director, Teaching for Change.

“I have been teaching, with complete class sets, Howard Zinn’s A Young People’s History of the United States for two years now…Many times, through Zinn’s book, I am able to reach students and have them participate in discussions when they have previously shown no interest in history at all…For many of my students, this is the first real book they have read cover to cover in their young lives.” — Sol Joye, Neil Armstrong Middle School, Forest Grove, OR