This writing will encompass ideas expressed in the first chapter of Howard Zinn’s novel A People’s History Of The United States from pages 1-22. Howard Zinn talks about Native Americans, and the conquistadors that met them. Throughout this section of the novel he emphasizes the viewpoint of Native Americans to differentiate himself from other historians by not placing an emphasis on the conquistadors and their explorers. He also chooses to select and bring up the atrocities that Columbus and the others committed. By doing this, Zinn provides a new perspective to history and one that is needed. He maintains his viewpoint that emphasis and selection have skewed history to certain conclusions. While other historians choose to emphasize the importance of Columbus’s voyages into the America’s, Zinn acknowledges this and demonstrates its importance while showing the imperfections and evils of these voyages. This is needed as it helps show how some societies achieved great things while pointing out the faults in these actions and societies so that they may be accurately recapitulated and learned from so as to end the “cycle of defeat” (Zinn 11). Zinn demonstrated another viewpoint that was crucial in the understanding of history. However, Zinn did not choose to place emphasis on the American Indians’ faults. This was slightly hypocritical of him and in my opinion, an oversight. He did not demonstrate effectively that many tribes were engaged in war almost all the time and that some tribes even had human sacrifices for ritual purposes. However, Zinn was ultimately on the right path for accurately keeping records of history so that we may learn from past mistakes that may have been missed by a skewed history resulting from the placing of selection and emphasis on certain parts of this history.