This book on American history made me cry and made me surprised at the way we Americans treated our people. It was the first time that I heard about how we mistreated the Indians, the workers, the Chinese, and how deeply we had exploited the African-Americans. i was chagrined, because I am a history major, but a European specialist. I looked up other books by Zinn and realized that he was a socialist and a liberal so he oriented his book towards the exploited classes and resistence movements against the wars. His books are focused on the Americans that were taken advantaged of and used by America to obtain imperialist and racial goals. There were also stories about draft dodgers, African-American revolts, and most of all about the Native Ameircans. He spoke of the Native-American holocaust and Columbus' role in it. Having worked with the Navajo, I had greater understanding about what he did to those people and now many of them have a victim mentality where everything and everyone are out to exploit them-at least the teenagers. It made me wonder if as a Chinese-American that I feel prejudice when I have not succeeded and it is not fair to those who I accused. I would recommend it to anyone, who wants to understand the true history of Ameirca, the things that we like to sweep under the rug, and who is not afraid to feel shame for this country's history. At the same time, we can still have hope that this American experiment in democracy is still that-an experiment with errors and corrections.
