Howard Zinn was a brilliant teacher, a passionate activist, and a warm and generous friend. His most influential work, "A People's History of the United States," was a gift to teachers everywhere--an eloquent anti-textbook that pointed the way to an approach to the past that was at once angry, passionate, and hopeful. Corporate textbooks…

Presents a series of lessons for a U.S. history class on Christopher Columbus's "discovery" of America. Notes that this approach teaches students to evaluate critically the historical information presented in their textbooks. (MM)