Howard Zinn's book starts out by destroying what everyone thinks of Christopher Colombus. Reading about his cruel enslavement of the natives suprised me. I knew he forced thm to be slaves but I didn't know that he was searching for gold. He forced them to find something that wasn't even on the Island of modern day Haiti. Many of the natives died and some got so depressed and miserable that they were killing their own babies. It was only after almost wiping out that civilization did he realize that there was no gold on the island.