The Problem With Howard Zinn
It is often said that a man of one book is dangerous. Over time, the phrase has evolved to express “fear” of the opinions of someone who has only read a single book, some being more harmful than others.
I find that Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States is one such book. Given its place as a national bestseller of public and critical acclaim, his magnum opus has been read by millions of Americans and distributed across the world. It has even achieved ubiquity in popular culture; Matt Damon’s character in Good Will Hunting, for instance, tells the audience that Zinn is required reading “if you want to read a real history book.” A People’s History, then, is the only work of American history that many will ever read, the kind that anyone with little to no interest in the field can pick off the shelf.
I will discuss here exactly why this is cause for concern. Naturally, I feel quite strongly about the issue because I was one of these people myself, having perused Zinn some years ago and declared it the ultimate historical truth. As I will argue, this sort of conviction is as insidious as it is disingenuous.
A People’s History was apparently written with good intentions. Zinn described his work as a departure from the “fundamental nationalist glorification of country” (New York Times) that pervaded historical education in his time. He spoke in 1998 of inciting a “quiet revolution” (Flagpole Magazine), and he kept his word. In 700 pages, Zinn recounts themes of exploitation and oppression and marginalized communities. He lends his pen to voices we have rarely heard, stories we have rarely been told.
These are noble intentions. Zinn takes a new approach to history, challenging the typical narrative of American exceptionalism, and achieves some good results. Primary accounts from slaves, vivid descriptions from common laborers, bloody reports from the victims of American imperialism — these are certainly worth exploring. We have come to reconsider questions of morality and justice thanks largely to Zinn’s effort. If the pendulum of historical education had been suspended at one extreme, the filtered lens of national exceptionalism, we can credit him for making it swing the other way.
Unfortunately, therein lies the problem. Zinn did jolt the pendulum toward the center, but with such force that it has now swung past the middle (the point of balance) and to the other extreme at breakneck speed. For many Americans, the pendulum is now suspended once more, this time at the equally filtered lens of “America bad.” If we irrationally loved this country in the past two centuries, we have come in the modern age to irrationally hate what it has done.
How exactly is Zinn responsible for this? His ambition to kindle a “quiet revolution” through A People’s History has crafted an almost spiteful account of the last 250 years, distorted by a deep pessimism for the American experience. Just as some historians of previous decades narrowed on the most convenient facts to sustain their narrative of exceptionalism, so Zinn commits the same error, withholding contradictory evidence and filling in the gaps himself to present his own ideas of the history of the United States.
For Howard Zinn, American history is a rinse-and-repeat cycle of “common folk” trying to secure equality and democracy in a nation ruled by a small elite, dedicated at all costs to retaining their power and oppressing the people. The government is a cruel, thoughtless machine of destruction by its very nature, crushing minority uprisings in its sole pursuit of economic self-enrichment. In short, America is inherently evil.
Common sense advises us to reject this premise. Have there been cases where politicians and businessmen acted in their own interest? Without question. Have there been cases where individuals were unjustly persecuted and their civil liberties violated? Too many to count. But to extrapolate these cases and blame the entirety of American leadership as conspirators, then perform a series of mental gymnastics to sustain this theory with distorted facts, is absurd. The result is at once a grave offense to our predecessors and highly counterproductive to teaching real history.
We are spoiled for choice, but perhaps Zinn’s coverage of the two defining moments in American history are the best examples. On the Revolutionary War, he describes the national movement as a giant sham, a malicious device orchestrated by men like Washington and Adams to divert class conflict and secure popular support for their own ascent to power. Here are three facts: there were class tensions before the 1770s; the Revolution started in 1776; many wealthy colonial leaders rose to high positions by the 1780s. Zinn forces a causal link between them, ignoring in the meantime any genuine ideological motivation driving the revolutionaries against the British, or the natural occurrence whereby successful leaders are granted power. He ascribes malice where there was none.
On the Civil War, Zinn takes a similar approach. The war was never about slavery, he says — it was fought exclusively because “the northern elite wanted economic expansion.” Common Union soldiers were deceived by the moral crusade to fight for them, too. For evidence, Zinn argues that Lincoln did not care about the slaves by cherry-picking and removing from proper context several letters, vetoes of abolitionist decrees from his generals, and limiting clauses in the Emancipation Proclamation. In so doing, he ignores every practical reality of the 1860s (namely, how to win a war) and spits on the extraordinary goodness and moral sense of Abraham Lincoln.
At a certain point, Zinn’s arguments are no longer flimsy theories backed by twisted evidence — in straining to see evil behind good intentions and cold calculations behind plain righteousness, A People’s History is as ungrateful as it is deliberately ignorant.
This is the Zinn problem, and it’s only compounded by his style of writing such that a great many in his audience can’t see that it exists. I know it well, since I was one of them. A People’s History is addictive because it’s presented as “real history,” as Matt Damon informed us. It flaunts conventional history by making radical assertions, and those hook the audience. Not unlike a conspiracy theory, it makes you feel privy to some great secret that few others are aware of. So the cycle persists — people read Zinn, and they are instantly won over.
The only solution is to read other authors. A proper overview of the Revolution or a biography on Lincoln would do wonders to counteract Zinn’s pessimism. This is why a man of one book is particularly dangerous if the book so happens to be A People’s History. Such a reader is solely exposed to one extreme, the filtered lens of “America bad,” equally harmful as the other lens of national exceptionalism.
I reiterate — plenty of facts and figures from American history are contemptible. They ought to be cause for shame. Yet there have been just as many shining deeds and virtuous leaders in the last 250 years. It is a crime to let the first consideration drown out the second, and vice versa. The noted historian Eric Foner put it best: “History from the bottom up, though necessary as a corrective, is as limited in its own way as history from the top down.” A People’s History was an overcorrection.
Zinn does raise important questions to contemplate, and he does shed light on lost voices and forgotten stories. We can certainly learn something from all of it — but we must see his work for what it is. The pendulum is no better situated at one extreme than the other.
By JOONYOUNG HEO’25
