"An unabashedly subjective challenge to American orothodox beliefs." – Kirkus Reviews
"A shotgun blast of revisionism that aims to shatter all the comfortable myths of American political discourse." – Los Angeles Times
"In these informal, challenging essays that link the personal to the political, Zinn aims to shake complacency, to challenge what he calls 'American orthodoxies' or recieved opinions about history and government." – Publishers Weekly
"Zinn's ambitious goal is not only to identify a dominant pattern of American ideas but to determine the soundness of that American ideology by putting the individual axioms on trial....A timely and important wake-up call to Americans who slumber in the netherworld of ideology." – In These Times
"It has been Zinn's life work to illuminate the subjectivities others have ignored....It joins his pioneering...A People's History of the United States to form what could be called the essential Zinn." – Boston Phoenix