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 the volumes
of 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.