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Analysis Of A People's History Of The United States By Howard Zinn

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A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, starts off in 1492 with the landing of Columbus in the Americas. Zinn describes that he wants to make an account of American history from the side that is not usually told. Zinn wants to show the side of history that isn 't so heroic as some of the books show it to be. With that in mind, chapter one starts off with the native americans and what happened to them because of European expansion. This starts with the arrival of Christopher Columbus. The story usually told is that Columbus shows up, discovers America, and is deemed a hero. Unfortunately, history is not all gold and glory. Zinn describes how the natives swam out to meet Columbus, gave him anything he wanted, and in all, showed him extreme generosity and hospitality. Columbus returned the favor by killing and enslaving the majority of the natives on the island. Sadly, after Columbus this situation became common throughout all of the Americas and wars were even fought between Europeans and Native Americans. The same thing happened with the Aztecs. Aztec society was flourishing before the arrival of Cortez. The Aztecs thought the spaniards were gods and the spaniards took advantage of that. Thus, another great civilization was destroyed by the Europeans. European conquest soon enveloped all of the Americas and the people who …show more content…
I think Howard Zinn does a great job presenting the facts and the details about historic events. I like how he’s aware that what he is writing about isn 't common knowledge and he’s just trying to inform the reader. I found the true extent of what the Europeans did to the natives appalling and yet fascinating, as I knew that the Europeans did some messed up stuff back then, but never on the scale in which Zinn told. I never knew that the pilgrims went to war with the natives as I’ve always been taught that they had a great friendship between

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