Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Zinn, Howard - Bruce Kuklick (review date 24 May 1980)

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Bruce Kuklick (review date 24 May 1980)

SOURCE: Kuklick, Bruce. “The People? Yes.” Nation 230, no. 20 (24 May 1980): 634-36.

[In the following review, Kuklick claims that while A People's History is a radical textbook, it exhibits many of the problems common to textbooks in general.]

Howard Zinn admits that “a people's history” is not the best description of his work, and I've tried to understand it by figuring out what would be the best description. The book is clearly about the oppression of the people: there are eloquent renditions of the destruction of Indian culture and rich analyses of the torment of the slaves, their revolts and their degradation after the Civil War. There are long explorations of the misery of the working class, its attempts to avoid becoming cannon fodder in American wars, and its struggles to form unions. Much time is also devoted to the study of left and radical politics. Finally, Zinn writes of...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Ralph Ellison (review date 8 November 1964)
   2. Allan R. Brockway (review date 25 November 1964)
   3. Martin B. Duberman (review date winter 1965)
   4. Margaret O'Brien (review date 5 February 1965)
   5. David P. Gauthier (review date November 1967)
   6. Carl Cohen (review date 2 December 1968)
   7. Simon Lazarus (review date 7 December 1968)
   8. Saville R. Davis (review date 16 January 1969)
   9. Courtney R. Sheldon (review date 30 July 1970)
   10. Ralph Stone (review date September 1970)
   11. Philip Green (review date December 1970)
   12. William L. O'Neill (review date June 1973)
   13. Peter Michelson (review date 28 July 1973)
   14. James T. Patterson (review date September 1973)
   15. Michael Kammen (review date 23 March 1980)
   16. Bruce Kuklick (review date 24 May 1980)
   17. Oscar Handlin (review date autumn 1980)
   18. Charles Glass (review date 24 October 1980)
   19. Erwin Knoll (review date February 1991)
   20. George Scialabba (review date 13 May 1991)
   21. Howard Zinn and Jack McEnany (interview date summer 1991)
   22. Michael Kazin (review date December 1991)
   23. Mark A. Graber (review date spring 1992)
   24. Paul Buhle (review date 21 November 1994)
   25. Matthew Rothschild (review date January 1995)
   26. Maurice Isserman (review date September 1995)
   27. Howard Zinn and David Barsamian (interview date July 1997)
   28. Harvey Wasserman (review date March 1998)
   29. Mariel Garza (review date July 1999)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright