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

Class Struggle to the War on Terror

by Howard Zinn

Book cover for A Young People's History of the United States, Volume Two

Adapted by Rebecca Stefoff

It is only right that the history of a nation that was built by slaves, immigrants, workers, and women—and wrested from Native Americans—be told from the point of view of these primary sources. Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States has sold one and a half million copies and inaugurated a new kind of history book. This is the second of a two-volume young adult adaptation of the history book that continues to influence generations of students young and old alike.

A Young People's History of the United States, Volume Two guides the reader through the twentieth century, including the war on terror that is among the forces shaping the United States today.

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Publish Date: 2007-05-01

ISBN: 9781583227602

Pages: 240

“Zinn has written a brilliant and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those who have been exploited … the book is an excellent antidote to establishment history … While the book is precise enough to please specialists, it should satisfy any adult reader.”

– Library Journal

“In many years of searching, we have not found one history book we would recommend to them—until [the] just published A Young People's History of the United States. This is the edition of A People's History that we have all been waiting for.”

– Deborah Menkart, executive director, Teaching for Change

“Zinn's work exemplifies an approach to history that is radical, regardless of its subject or geographical location. He tells us the untold story, the story of the world's poor, the world's workers, the world's homeless, the world's oppressed, the people who don't really qualify as real people in official histories. Howard Zinn painstakingly unearths the details that the powerful seek to airbrush away. He brings official secrets and forgotten histories out into the light, and in doing so, changes the official narrative that the powerful have constructed for us. He strips the grinning mask off the myth of the benign American Empire. To not read Howard Zinn is to do a disservice to yourself.”

– Arundhati Roy

“[Zinn] gives a real insight in to history that is often left out of text books. Highly recommended.”

– Socialist Review

HOWARD ZINN’s (1922–2010) great subject isn’t war, but peace. After his experience as a bombardier in World War II, he became convinced that there could be no such thing as a “just war,” as the vast majority of modern warfare’s victims are made up of innocent civilians. In his books, including A People’s History of the United States and its companion volume, Voices of a People’s History of the United States, Zinn affirms the power of the masses to influence major events. Through a lifetime of pointed scholarship and principled civil disobedience, his oeuvre continues to inform and inspire activists, scholars, and change-makers around the world.

Check out A Road Map to Howard Zinn's Writings Published by Seven Stories Press here.