From TheBestLinks.com
Howard Zinn Speaking 16 February 2004
Howard Zinn (born December 7, 1922 in Brooklyn, New York) is an influential leftist historian. Zinn is retired from a professorship at Boston University. He has received the Thomas Merton Award, the Eugene V. Debs Award, the Upton Sinclair Award, and the Lannan Literary Award. He lives in the Auburndale neighborhood of Newton, Massachusetts in the United States.
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: Native Americans, slaves, women, blacks, Populists, etc. His autobiography is You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train.
A reference to A People's History was made in the movie Good Will Hunting; Matt Damon grew up next door to Zinn. Another pop culture reference to the book, which has become an bestseller, was in a Columbus Day episode of the TV show The Sopranos. Zinn, together with Noam Chomsky is one of the most respected icons of the libertarian left in the U.S.
Published works
- Postwar America: 1945–1971 (with Jack P. Greene, 1973) ISBN 089608678X
- The Sixties Experience: hard lessons about modern America (with Edward P. Morgan, 1992) ISBN 1566390141
- From a Native Son: selected essays in indigenism, 1985–1995 (with Ward Churchill, 1996) ISBN 0896085538
- A People's History of the Supreme Court (with Peter H. Irons, 2000) ISBN 0140292012
- Silencing Political Dissent: how post-9-11 anti-terrorism measures threaten our civil liberties (with Nancy Chang, Center for Constitutional Rights, 2002) ISBN 1583224947
- You Back the Attack, We'll Bomb Who We Want (with Micah Ian Wright, 2003) ISBN 1583225846
- The Forging of the American Empire: from the Revolution to Vietnam, a history of US imperialism (with Sidney Lens, 2003) ISBN 0745321003
- If You're Not a Terrorist…Then Stop Asking Questions! (with Micah Ian Wright, 2004) ISBN 1583226265
External links
- Critical Resources: Howard Zinn (http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/ejournal/HowardZinn.htm)
- C-SPAN Book TV In Depth 3 Hours Interview (http://www.booktv.org/indepth/index.asp?schedid=145&segid=2735) - RealVideo format.
- Interview with Howard Zinn (http://www.airamericaplace.com/upload/aamr041604.mp3) - On Air America Radio's The Majority Report - MP3 format. (Apr 16th, 2004)
- A-Infos Radio Project: Talks by Howard Zinn (http://www.radio4all.net/index.php?op=search&nav=&session=&searchtext=zinn) - MP3 format.
- Public Reading of A People's history of the United States (http://www.democracynow.org/index.pl?issue=20040705) - With Howard Zinn, James Earl Jones, Harris Yulin, Andre Gregory, Marisa Tomei, Danny Glover, Myla Pitt, Kurt Vonnegut, Alfre Woodard, Alice Walker - RealVideo format.
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