Rethinking America's Past: Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States in the Classroom and Beyond

Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States has sold over three million copies and has had a significant impact on American history. Rethinking America's Past is the first work to assess the impact of Zinn's work on historical teaching and learning, showing that it has been used by teachers to encourage students to debate and rethink conventional versions of American history. It also explores how Zinn's work has influenced deeper, more critical renderings of the American past in movies and on stage and television.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 384 pages
Publication date: 01 November 2021
Publisher: University of Georgia Press

No introductory work of American history has had more influence over the past forty years than Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, which since its publication in 1980 has sold more than three million copies. Zinn's iconoclastic critique of American militarism, racism, and capitalism has drawn bitter criticism from the Right, most recently from President Donald Trump, who at his White House Conference on American History in 2020 denounced Zinn as a Left propagandist and accused teachers aligned with Zinn of indoctrinating students to hate America and be ashamed of its history.

Rethinking America's Past is the first work to use archival and classroom evidence to assess the impact that Zinn's classic work has had on historical teaching and learning and on American culture. This evidence refutes Trump's charges, showing that rather than indoctrinating students, Zinn's book has been used by teachers to have students debate and rethink conventional versions of American history.

Rethinking America's Past also explores the ways Zinn's work fostered deeper, more critical renderings of the American past in movies and on stage and television and traces the origins and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of A People's History in light of more recent historical scholarship.

In conclusion, Rethinking America's Past is a groundbreaking work that provides a fresh and critical perspective on the impact of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States on historical teaching, learning, and American culture. It challenges the conventional narratives of American history and reveals the ways in which Zinn's work has inspired students to think critically about the past and to engage with it in new and meaningful ways.

Weight: 522g
Dimension: 152 x 230 x 26 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780820360348