Book Description: The New Press's Abridged Teaching Edition of A People's History of the United States has made Howard Zinn's original text available specifically for classroom use. With exercises and teaching materials to accompany each chapter, this edition spans American Beginnings, Reconstruction, the Civil War and through to the present, with new chapters on the Clinton Presidency, the 2000 elections, and the "war on terrorism."
Teachers Beware! If you are an instructor and intend to use the teaching edition as an aid, be prepared to do lots of legwork yourself. At the end of each chapter there are exercises in the form of questions, concrete to abstract, that you can use. However, no suggested answers are provided. In my mind, when I purchase a teaching addition, there is an implication that the heavy lifting will be done by the authors. That's what they get paid for. The teaching edition is a disappointment and a ripoff considering the fact that I had already purchased an edition of the Zinn book.
Great ideas for the classroom! Zinn is focused on getting the historical information correct, and explaining why we learned it another way. He presents the side of history that is untold, but honest. TRUTH is the core of this book. It's getting it right and learning from our past so we don't make the same mistakes. Zinn does a great job at this. The section on different teaching techniques is also wonderful for those teachers who get tired of doing the same thing in their lessons. Teacher's must remember that there is more than just one learning style, and it's important not to sxclude those students who learn in different ways. I would recommend this book to any history teacher or anyone just interested in American history!
Far Left History I was so excited to get this book to use for home school history class, but when we got into the book we discovered that the subject matter was so far left that it was offensive to us. It may be fine for some, but not for middle of the road or conservative people. This author made wonderful projects to do, but the text was not applicable to high school juniors in my case.
Anything Goes Trivia
Trevor
Megaton Man
