In 1980, the historian Howard Zinn published A People's History of the United States, a narrative that centers on everyday people's lives. It is a history from the bottom up, a history from below, that has inspired numerous tomes on People's history themes, while also being banned from curriculums.
As the Zinn Education Project explains,
"As historian Howard Zinn shows, many of our country's greatest battles — the fights for a fair wage, an eight-hour workday, child-labor laws, health and safety standards, universal suffrage, women's rights, racial equality — were carried out at the grassroots level, against bloody resistance. Covering Christopher Columbus's arrival through President Clinton's first term, A People's History of the United States features insightful analysis of the most important events in U.S. history."
The Zinn Education Project "promotes and supports the teaching of people's history in middle and high school classrooms across the country. Based on the lens of history highlighted in Howard Zinn's best-selling book A People's History of the United States, the website offers free, downloadable lessons and articles organized by theme, time period, and reading level."
Zinn's book has inspired an entire series from the New Press on "People's History," including titles like A People's History of Sports in the United States: 250 Years of Politics, Protest, People, and Play by David Zirin; The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third Worldby Vijar Prashad; and A People's Art History of the United States: 250 Years of Activist Art and Artists Working in Social Justice Movements, by Nicolas Lampert. An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is published by Random House.
Pluto Press also has a People's History series.
"A people's history flips the script. When we look at history from the standpoint of the workers and not just the owners, the soldiers and not just the generals, the invaded and not just the invaders, we can begin to see society more fully, more accurately. The more clearly we see the past, the more clearly we'll see the present — and be equipped to improve it."
With a focus on Europe, some of the titles in the Pluto Press series include A People's History of Tennisby David Berry, A People's History of Catalonia by Michael Eaude, and A People's History of the Portuguese Revolutionby Raquel Varela.
