Guus Bosman

Initially I was disappointed with this book. I started reading the last chapter, on 9/11 and the war on terror, because I was curious what a historician would write about this recent events. However, the left-wing partisanship of the author showed very clearly and was annoying. There is nothing wrong with being against a war, but I was not expecting such obvious activism in a history book. This was, looking back, my own mistake -- the back of the book clearly states that this is a book written by someone with a mission. A People's History of the United States is about the people movements such the socialistic and anarchist parties.

The last few chapters, on recent history, were too partisan for my taste. However, remainder of the book, on America's earlier history was insightful. Here the approach of the author, to look not only at the victor's in history but mainly at the victims, give a refreshing new look to some of the well-known parts of history. Of course, by now the fate of the original Indian population of America is well-known, but I didn't know much about the social-political structure of the original settler societies, or about the history of the Socialist Party in the United States and it was nice to read about them.

After a bad start, I started enjoying the book and I have learned quite a bit from it. I read a large part of this book when travelling to and especially from New York in the Christmas holiday of 2005.