When Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States came out in 1980, it literally rocked the boat. Instead of starting where most histories of the Americas start — on the deck of Columbus’s ship as it approached land — Zinn flipped the script, focusing instead on what the people standing on the shore would have seen. This episode tells the story of the ripple effects of Zinn’s radical take on history.

Borrowed and Returned is a podcast series from Brooklyn Public Library that examines what our reading public borrowed in the past, and what we’re all reading now. In conversations with writers and readers across the country, the show revisits the books that changed us, and changed America, too.

To listen to Borrowed and Returned, head over to your podcast app of choice.

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