A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

book jacket with portrait of Howard ZinnA People’s History of the United States (1980 original, most recent 2010)
by Howard Zinn (award winning author)

Considered a modern classic for good reason. Every page an eye opening experience to the “real” history of America and you just know it is all true, especially the parts you have lived through but didn’t understand at the time, this book makes the behind the scenes and suppressed or avoided factual presentation in school books.

This is a MUST BUY AND READ BOOK. I say buy because it is over 700 pages long. Plus good to have as a reference. I checked it out from the library but someone else put a reserve on it (!!!) so have to take it back so will be buying it myself. I am kind of flummoxed by the number of times recently that books I have checked out get reserved limiting my renewals. It seems statistically unlikely, especially for an older book like this. And since I had never heard of him before coming across his name in another book, that is strange too. I still can’t believe I lived through this time and did not realize how significant or even who he was! Amazing man, superb research and writing.

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The Life of the Parties by A. James Reichley

The Life of the Parties: A History of American Political Parties (2000, 1992)

the life of the partiesThis link is to the 2000 edition, the one I am reading is 1992 but not as dated as one might think given that it begins at the beginning of America’s founding and all the information up to then and is extremely detailed and analyzed and described very well.

This book answers the many questions I have had over the years of how we ended up with an essentially two-party system that is run like two warring corporations for a monopoly of the United States government as the prize.

I knew that the Founding Fathers had not begun nor wanted political parties, but apparently not “until they began running parties themselves.” Thomas Jefferson was pro-party. Alexander Hamilton “associated parties with ‘ambition, avarice, personal animosity.'” I’m going to side with Hamilton on this point. James Madison “wrote in Federalist Number Ten of ‘the mischiefs of faction. John Adams expressed ‘dread’ toward ‘division of the republic into to great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other.'” Now that was prescient!

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