I was introduced to this book one night when I was in G bar by one gentleman who happened to talk to me. Strangely enough, instead of talking about general topics, we talked about social issues and politics. Since he realized how much I loved history, he suggested me to read A People’s History of the United States. “It will rock your world” that was he told me.

It indeed rocks my world. Besides, Gun, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, this is another book that once I read it I cannot put it down. Even though it is a very thick book, I find it very fascinating every chapter I reach. It totally deconstructs all the high school books that are taught in the US.

The human history is always written by victors, majority of the society or the rich, but this book is written from the minority point of view, from the native Indian, the Blacks, gays, women and suppressed labors. Howard Zinn, a professor, a historian and social activist, deliberately presents the different perspective of the American history from the year that Columbus returned the hospitality of the Arawaks of Bahama Islands who brought him and his men food, water, gifts by slaughtering and enslaving them to the 2000 election drama.

From the history, the American government (that was packed with white males and the rich people) was always ready to sacrifice every minority and the poor for their own success and race survival. Millions of Native Indians were massacred in the name of the progress. The blacks were enslaved to make sure the plants in the Southern states were still running. The Chinese who helped this country building the railroad were trashed after the Whites could not compete with them in search of gold. Other minority (non-whites) were excluded from this land of opportunity. During World War II, the Japanese (and the Japanese American) were put in the camps with the government’s excuses of them being spies while the Germans and Italian were not even scrutinized.

The world police like the United States in fact is an opportunist in disguise. She will patrol everywhere she will be able to profit from like the Middle East and South America but not in Africa.

Reading this book reaffirms my belief that war has always been a tool for the government to stimulate the patriotism among the people to go to war, but every war is not the people’s war; it is always the government’s war. It is the war of the elite and government and the clash of ideology. The people who are always sacrificed are the minority, the poor people, women who have lost their husbands and children who have lost their father.

The Vietnam War, the Civil War, both World Wars, Korean War, Cold War and the War on Terrorism are the wars of ideology and of course for the benefits of the rich and American enterprises.

Zinn also challenges the belief of heroic actions of those presidents like Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt, the story of intense civil right struggle during 60s and 70s, the debacle of Vietnam War, decade of Cold War and the Regan’s and Clinton’s legacy. He presents the different historical perspective from the poor, women and minority who in fact are always sacrificed for the sake of this country.

This is why I love this book so much and this is why I love reading the books that deconstructs my old belief that is taught by the school system and the heroic myth of nationalism. I just actually raised the question to my friend that how many people in Thailand are courageous enough to dig out the fact of the history and dare to touch the institutions here but Zinn does it. He gives readers other facts that are distorted by patriotism, prejudice and deliberate manipulation by the government.

“My point is not that we must, in telling history, accuse, judge, condemn Columbus in absentia. It is too late for that; it would be a useless scholarly exercise in morality. But the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress (Hiroshima and Vietnam, to save Western civilization; Kronstadt and Hungary, to save socialism; nuclear proliferation, to save us all)--that is still with us. One reason these atrocities are still with us is that we have learned to bury them in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth." Howard Zinn

Why we need to celebrate the Columbus Day while he was a greedy cold-blooded murderer?

God knows how many times I will read this book.

Tae Athikomvittaya