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Discusses Zinn’s “bottom up” framing and its appeal to hidden narratives, then critiques reliance on secondary sources, absence of footnotes, and limited engagement with primary evidence. Also examines scholarly reception, mixed early reviews, later silence, and the author’s warrant for interpretation.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":15,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/literature/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/undue-certainty-where-howard-zinns-a-peoples-history-falls-short/592444/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/undue-certainty-where-howard-zinns-a-peoples-history-falls-short/592444.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"McGucket","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-22","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":8},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What does the article argue Zinn gets right about history teaching?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"It credits Zinn’s “bottom up” approach for surfacing narratives often hidden by traditional textbooks and correcting simplified stories of progress.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"What shortcomings does the article identify in A People’s History as historical scholarship?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"It criticizes the book’s heavy reliance on secondary sources, lack of footnotes, and the way primary documents are used to support the main text rather than open alternative viewpoints.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"How does the article characterize scholarly attention to the book over time?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"It notes early mixed assessments by major journals and historians, followed by decades of relative silence, with a renewed but limited historian’s gaze around later editions.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},592444,1792667170,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":14,"category_name":15,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":8,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":39,"language":139,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":140,"faqs":141,"seo_title":142,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":143,"read_time":144},1236954412713,"https://us-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_29158cc5080c5b710cf443261637dec0","Undue Certainty  \nWhere Howard Zinn’sA People’s History Falls Short  \nBy Sam Wineburg  \nH  \noward Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States has few peers among contemporary historical works. With more than 2 million copies in print, A People’s History is more than a book. It is a cultural icon.“You  \nwanna read a real history book?”Matt Damon asks his therapist in the 1997 movie Good Will Hunting. “Read Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States. That book’ll ... knock you on your ass.”  \nThe book’s original gray cover was painted red, white, and blue for its Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition in 2003, and it is now marketed with special displays in suburban megastores. A  \non Amazon’s bestseller list—not too shabby for a book first published in 1980.  \nOnce considered radical, A People’s History has gone mainstream. By 2002, Will Hunting had been replaced by A. J. Soprano, of the HBO hit The Sopranos. Doing his homework atthe kitchen counter, A. J. tells his parents that his history teacher compared Christopher Columbus to Slobodan Milosevic. When Tony fumes“Your teacher said that?”A. J. responds,“It’s not just my teacher—it’s the truth. It’s in my history book.” The camera pans to A. J. holding a copy of A People’s History.  \nHistory, for Zinn, is looked at from “the bottom up”: a view “of the Constitution from the standpoint of the slaves, of Andrew Jackson as seen by the Cherokees, of the Civil War as seen by the  \nweek after Zinn’s death in 2010, A People’s History was number 7  \nSam Wineburg is the Margaret Jacks Professor of Education anda professor of history (by courtesy) at Stanford University, and the director of the Stanford History Education Group, which conducts research to improve history instruction (to learn about the group’s work, see [http://sheg.stanford.edu](http://sheg.stanford.edu)). He is the author of dozens of scholarly articles and the award-winning book Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts. He began his career as a middle school and high school teacher.  \nNew York Irish, of the Mexican war as seen by the deserting soldiers of Scott’s army.”1 Decades before we thought in such terms, Zinn provided a history for the 99 percent.  \nMany teachers view A People’s History as an anti-textbook, a corrective to the narratives of progress dispensed by the state. This is undoubtedly true on a topical level. When learning about the Spanish-American War, students don’t read about Teddy Roosevelt charging up San Juan Hill. Instead, they follow the  \nILLUSTRAT IONS BY NENAd JAKESEVIc  \nAmERIcAN EdUcATOR | WINTER 2012–2013 27  \nplight of foot soldiers sweltering in the Cuban tropics, clutching their stomachs not from Spanish bullets but from food poisoning caused by rancid meat sold to the army by Armour and Company. Such stories acquaint students with a history too often hidden and too quickly brushed aside by traditional textbooks.  \nBut in other ways—ways that strike atthe very heart of what it means to learn history as a discipline—A People’s History is closer to students’ state-approved texts than its advocates are wont to admit. Like traditional textbooks, A People’s History relies almost entirely on secondary sources, with no archival research to thicken its narrative. Like traditional textbooks, the book is naked of footnotes, thwarting inquisitive readers who seek to retrace the author’s interpretative steps. And, like students’ textbooks, when A People’s History draws on primary sources, these documents serve to prop up the main text, but never provide an alternative view or open up a new field of vision.  \nWhat does A People’s History teach young people about what it means to think historically?  \nInitially, A People’s History drew little scholarly attention (neither of the two premier historical journals, the American Historical Review and the Journal of American History, reviewed the book) . Among historians who did take notice, the verdict was mixed. Some, like Harvard’s Osca","cbCaina7WJMTGvwR","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaina7WJMTGvwR","pdf",241322,"English","# Undue Certainty - Where Howard Zinn’s A People’s History Falls Short\n## Zinn’s mainstream cultural impact\n## History “from the bottom up”\n## Limits compared with state-approved texts\n## Scholarly reception and later influence","[{\"question\":\"What does the article argue Zinn gets right about history teaching?\",\"answer\":\"It credits Zinn’s “bottom up” approach for surfacing narratives often hidden by traditional textbooks and correcting simplified stories of progress.\"},{\"question\":\"What shortcomings does the article identify in A People’s History as historical scholarship?\",\"answer\":\"It criticizes the book’s heavy reliance on secondary sources, lack of footnotes, and the way primary documents are used to support the main text rather than open alternative viewpoints.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the article characterize scholarly attention to the book over time?\",\"answer\":\"It notes early mixed assessments by major journals and historians, followed by decades of relative silence, with a renewed but limited historian’s gaze around later editions.\"}]","Undue Certainty - Where Howard Zinn’s A People’s History Falls Short | PDF",1792074598,12]