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 — Howard Zinn flipped the script, focusing instead on what the people standing on the shore would have seen. In this episode, we look at the ripple effects of Zinn’s radical take on history. 

You can read a transcript of this episode on our web page.

• Check out our booklist with titles related to A People’s History of the United States.
• You can find Nick Witham’s book Popularizing the Past at the University of Chicago Press.
• Learn more about the ReVisioning History series from Beacon Press.
• Read more about Howard Zinn, and visit the Zinn Education Project for tons of resources for teachers and students.
• History books are one of the subject areas targeted for censorship right now. Learn what you can do to help by visiting our Books Unbanned homepage, or listening to Borrowed and Banned, our previous series about the state of book banning in America.