| Summary: | Arguably, one of the more accessible books of its kind, Howard Zinn restores the history of the United States to its rightful owners, the people. A People?s History of the United States is the only work of its kind that tells America?s narrative from the perspective of women, workers, African Americans, Native Americans, poor, as well as immigrant labor. Popular for its accessible and clear writing as well as its scholarly grounding, Zinn uses a wide range of sources that include Barbara Ehrenreich (Zinn, Peoples History 662). Zinn writes, ?According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Census Bureau, in 1998, one of every three working people in the United States had jobs paying at or below the federal poverty level. The writer Barbara Ehrenreich spent a year working at various jobs ? house cleaner, waitress, factory worker ? and reported (in her book Nickeled and Dimed) that jobs such as those left workers unable to afford housing or medical care, or even adequate food? (Zinn, Peoples History 662). While Ehrenreich was busy doing this study, according to Zinn, the Clinton Administration was busy getting NAFTA passed and implementing its contradictory and uneven platform falling short of providing opportunities and exporting jobs to Mexico (Zinn, People?s History 658)
|
|---|