A Young People's History of the United States

Young People have been making important contributions to history for centuries. There's Anyokah, the child who helped bring written language to her Cherokee people. There are the young laborers who-to the benefit of their peers toiling in cotton mills, canneries, and mines-stood up for themselves with the National Child Labor Committee's Declaration of Dependence. And there's John Tinker, the high school student who fought all the way to the Supreme Court for freedom of expression at school-and won. These stories punctuate this illustrated Young Adult edition of A People's History of the United States, which brings to light the viewpoints of workers, slaves, immigrants, women, Native Americans, and others whose stories, and their impact, are rarely included in history books. In presenting a radical new way of understanding America's history, Howard Zinn reminds younger readers that America's true greatness is shaped by our dissident voices, not our military generals. Book jacket.

Howard Zinn's great subject isn't war, but peace. Early on, after his experience as a bombardier in World War II more than sixty years ago, he became convinced that there could no longer be such a thing as a just war, because the vast majority of the victims in modern warfare are, increasingly, civilians. Zinn has-through a lifetime of principled civil disobedience and his many books, including the bestseller A People's History of the United States-influenced four generations in the ways of peace.