I managed to avoid this landmark work of revisionist American history for a few years, trying to spare myself the anxiety I knew it would cause, but I finally gave in and read it.  As expected, the book is aggressively populist, and anti-capitalist nearly to the point of hysteria --- but nevertheless, it's a well-researched alternative account.  Zinn's narrative of the brutal suppression of the Philippine independence, which is left out of mainstream American history books, is chillingly congruent with the accounts that I read, growing up in Philippine schools.  That and other missing pieces of the story of American imperialism (often benevolent in intent, but cruel in execution) add up to a gaping hole in recorded American history.  Those missing pieces are what leave us baffled in the face of foreign hostility and terrorism -- and this book begins to fill in the gaps in our understanding.  In an era where we seem in danger of backsliding into McCarthyism, and dissenting opinion is the lifeblood of the intellectual community, this book emerges as newly important. Read it with a grain of salt, and a fistful of Valium -- but read it.