Summary: A History Of The American People By Paul Johnson

Courtney Hart

In the preface of Paul Johnsons “A History of the American People” he shares with us his view on America and the study of it and its people. He tells us that his book is not his opinion but the facts about America as fully and honestly as he could deliver them. Growing up he learned little to almost none about America’s history and the people, he mostly learned Greek, Roman, and English history. One of his tutors A. J. P. Taylor said to him “You can study American history when you have graduated, if you can bear it.” As you could imagine that sparked his interest of the subject and made him want to learn. His first encounters with American history were with officers of the US Sixth Fleet and in the 1950s when he was working in Pairs as journalist. In his book he
wishes to provide the facts, dates and figures to help students to generally grasp American history.
He does not care to qualify into black, whites, or Native American he loves everyone’s American history and cares to tell all their stories. In the afterword of Howard Zinns “A People’s History of the United States” he tells us his view of American history as “there is no such thing as a pure fact, innocent of interpretation.” He believes that for every fact there is judgment and other facts being left out. He tells us that he will tell the stories of wars not through the eyes of the generals and diplomats but through the eyes of the GIs, the parents who got the telegram of “the enemy.” He comes to find out how twisted and wrong the history of America is by realizing that it’s only a “white mans history.” Not very much of America’s history deals with the Native American’s or the African American’s, but they were there too just as much as the white man. He explains that from when he was in first grade to grade school they only taught him the white man’s history behind the landing of Christopher Columbus and the famous Louisiana, Florida purchase. Never once did they tell us what really truly happened behind those events and how awful it really
was for those events to happen. He says that in 1998 he was asked to speak at a symposium in Boston’s historic Faneuil Hall, on the Boston Massacre. He accepted as long as he didn’t have to speak about the Boston Massacre. He focused his speech not on the killing of five colonist by the British troops but of the other massacres that have happened in American history of nonwhite people. By doing this it not only shows the long term of racism in America but would reinforce our pride of America. He tells how we all learn in school of the Boston Massacre but never of the massacre of 600 men, women, and children of the Pequot tribe in New England in 1637? Or even of the military attack by 200 U.S cavalrymen in 1870 that wiped the whole sleeping camp of Piegan Indians in Montana? None of us do unless you study American history down to the core. He wants us to read his book and “awaken a greater consciousness of class conflict, racial injustice, sexual inequality, and national arrogance.” In reading a small part of each book I have come to notice just how much I don’t know about America and our history and look forward to reading and learning the stories from Paul Johnson and more history of nonwhite people and their stories from Howard Zinn.