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...