Here in their own words are Frederick Douglass, George Jackson, Chief Joseph, Martin Luther King Jr, Plough Jogger, Sacco & Vanzetti, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Mark Twain & Malcolm X, to name just a few of the hundreds appearing in Voices of a People’s History of the United States, edited by Howard Zinn & Anthony Arnove. Paralleling the 24 chapters of Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, Voices of a People’s History is the long-awaited companion volume to the national bestseller.
For Voices, Zinn & Arnove have selected testimonies to living history—speeches, letters, poems, songs—left by the people who make history happen, but who usually are underrepresented or misrepresented in history books: women, Native Americans, workers, blacks & Latinos. Zinn has written short introductions to the texts, which themselves range in length from letters or poems of less than a page to entire speeches & essays that run several pages & longer. Voices of a People’s History is a symphony of our nation’s original voices, rich in ideas & actions, an embodiment of the power of civil disobedience & dissent, wherein lies our nation’s true spirit of defiance & resilience.
Beloved historian & activist Howard Zinn is the author of the best-selling A People’s History of the United States & many other books, including The Zinn Reader (Seven Stories Press 2000), Artists in the Time of War (Seven Stories, 2003) & Terrorism & War (Seven Stories 2002).
Anthony Arnove is editor of Terrorism & War by Howard Zinn & Iraq Under Siege. An activist & contributor to ZNet, his work appears in The Nation, The Financial Times & Mother Jones. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.