People's History by Daniel Geery
The book I've been meaning to read for a decade or so has finally made it to my night stand. I am only on page 63, of 662 pages of text, and my worldview has already been radically altered. I thought others might be interested in this paragraph from A People's History of the United States,
1492 -- Present, by Howard Zinn, 20th Edition, 1999, Harper Collins
Press:
"Through all of that growth [in the early
American colonies], the upper class was getting most of the benefits and
monopolized political power. A historian who studied Boston tax lists in 1687
and 1771 found that in 1687 there were, out of a population of six thousand,
about one thousand property owners, and that the top 5 percent--1 percent of the
population--consisted of fifty rich individuals who had 25 percent of the
wealth. By 1770, the top 1 percent of property owners owned 44 percent of the
wealth."
I can't recommend this book highly enough. Our country is light years away from what we were taught in school, unless you had some remarkably special teacher. I would also note that the 99% have been resisting for a long, long time, and it appears we came close to being a real democracy more than once.
Should you ever need more reason to keep up The Occupation (and learn about the mind-sets you have but don't even know about), read this book.
