About book The Zinn Reader: Writings On Disobedience And Democracy (1997)
Amazon was pretty much giving this away a while back, but it would be a pretty good deal even at full price.700 some-odd pages long, this is an anthology of magazine articles, essays, chapters from various books, introductions he wrote to other people's books and what have you. It would make a great compliment to A People's History of the United States, which is required reading for my brothers in the Blame America First community, and truth be told, it's a more entertaining read.You get to learn way more about about his life growing up in the immigrant slums of Brooklyn, back in the dark ages, his time as a bombardier in World War II, dropping tons of napalm on a town in France that didn't have shit to do with the war, the time he spent as a professor at Spelman College and as an active participant in the civil rights movement, and his opposition to the Vietnam War in the '60s and '70s.Articles span from maybe the 1950s all the way into the Obama administration -- which is weird given that he died in early 2010. The most recent one must not have been written very long before he died.
Wake up and smell the truth.: "A People's History of the United States" forever changed the way I viewed the world and the system I grew up in. Continuing that tradition, "The Zinn Reader..", wakes up a desire in one's soul to rise up and do something about the injustices and hypocrisies that have dominated our past and continued to swallow our present. Professor Zinn write clearly, honestly, and furiously about topics ranging from the distribution of wealth to the ideal uses of scholarship and intellectualism. He lacks no emotion or fury, unlike many other historians. The main challenge Zinn makes it to exercise free thought, and "to be skeptical of someone else's reality." Very few historians, or writers for that matter, dare to look at the world from the perspective of the poor, the disenfranchised, the bombed, the murdered, the jailed, the conquered, the victim, but Zinn does exactly that, and in doing so puts out a masterful collection that not only instructs us in History, but also challenges our humanity and our place in the world.
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I miss Howard Zinn so much. I wish he was around to write about history as it's unfolding right now. Readable, unapologetically subjective, and prosaic, Zinn reminds us that history is alive and tangible.This book is a great survey of the breadth of Zinn's own history as historian journalist. From his childhood to his service to his early years of political activism, Zinn takes us on his journey, but focuses on the world around him as he journeys through it.This is definitely going on the reading list for both of my sons' high school history curriculum.
—drublood Duro
This book is essential if you want to be introduced to Zinn. Well, hell. It's just damn essential, even if you don't. You should. Read it is what I'm saying.If there is a better way to trace the common values that inspire civil rights efforts, labor rights efforts and pacifist efforts I have yet to find it. Zinn, over the course of 40 years and prolific essays, links the struggle for human dignity across decades and accurately lays accountability at the feet of the inhabitors of the structures of concentrated wealth and power. Clearly composed and astutely explained history that will forever color how you process what you are told by the powered gentry of your day...
—Steve
