A People's History of the United States

[August 2009] This provides a few anecdotes of "revolutionary" history of America. In the introduction, the author proclaims he is providing a history of the individual people, instead of the common focus of the important names and dates. However, the actual focus is on people involved in left wing causes (with the focus often an key players in these rolls.) While this does provide a good background of socialist causes, it is primarily a history of liberal students and the poor that associate with their causes. (He even attempts to show a more 'broad' support for an issue by saying that in addition to the college towns, San Francisco passed a similar anti-war resolution.) The goal is obviously an attempt to paint social revolutions as being more broadly representative of the people. However, this leaves out many other things that could be interesting. The first person approach used for much of the narrative also makes it feel more like propaganda than history.

The reading of the audiobook also has something to be desired. Matt Damon's delivery is fairly well done, but very slow. Howard Zinn's comments manage to be even slower. Make sure you can play it at faster than normal speed!