SOURCE: Graber, Mark A. Review of Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology, by Howard Zinn. Political Science Quarterly 107, no. 1 (spring 1992): 187-89.

In the following review, Graber calls Zinn's book successful in terms of its critique of American ideology, particularly in the sections on U.S. foreign policy.

Thomas Jefferson thought that the tree of liberty needed to be watered with blood every so often. Only through intermittent reenactments of the revolution, he believed, would American ideals retain their vitality. Howard Zinn's latest book offers a valuable alternative for a nuclear age. “Whatever in the past has been the moral justification of violence,” he points out, “must now be accomplished by other means” (p. 289). Zinn's remedy for “an obedient, acquiescent, passive citizenry,” a disease he correctly considers “deadly to democracy” (p. 5), is a vigorous interrogation of the ideas that implicitly structure mainstream American thought. His work promises “declarations of...