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In a way, nothing could be more timely than reading Howard Zinn's acclaimed "People's History of the United States," in this updated edition.

After all, the Bush regime and one-party rule is maintained by employing a historical narrative that basically is premised on the them of the "White Man's Burden" -- or how the divinely inspired white male conquered America and tamed the uncivilized heathens. That is basically Bush's stance toward Iraq, with code words to conceal the politically incorrect outlook.

Zinn, who wrote the first edition of the People's History in 1980, has lived to see it used as a textbook in progressive schools and as a general history book for the public at large. That is to say, Americans looking for an alternative history to the myth of the divinely-inspired conqueror. (And remember, Bush's mission has its origins in the gruesome Crusades of the Middle Ages.)

Already a classic, Zinn's book would be one of the first banned if the GOP ever fully assumes dictatorship. The People's History of the United States is pluralism's answer to elitism; populism's answer to oligarchical rule.

It's the history of America that the Busheviks want to ban and bury

This P.S. edition of Zinn's book features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

On September 12, the Washington Post, reported: "President Bush said yesterday that he senses a 'Third Awakening' of religious devotion in the United States that has coincided with the nation's struggle with international terrorists, a war that he depicted as 'a confrontation between good and evil.'

"'A lot of people in America see this as a confrontation between good and evil, including me,' Bush said during a 1 1/2 -hour Oval Office conversation on cultural changes and a battle with terrorists that he sees lasting decades."

This is the Bush version of narrative of the Crusades, of the divinely inspired white male overcoming the barbaric "Indians."

Howard Zinn offers us a compelling historical alternative.

"Zinn was raised in a working-class family in Brooklyn, and flew bombing missions for the United States in World War II, an experience he now points to in shaping his opposition to war. In 1956, he became a professor at Spelman College in Atlanta, a school for black women, where he soon became involved in the Civil rights movement, which he participated in as an adviser to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and chronicled, in his book SNCC: The New Abolitionists. Zinn collaborated with historian Staughton Lynd and mentored a young student named Alice Walker. When he was fired in 1963 for insubordination related to his protest work, he moved to Boston University, where he became a leading critic of the Vietnam War.

He is perhaps best known for A People's History of the United States, which presents American history through the eyes of those he feels are outside of the political and economic establishment."

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