Zinn Information
Howard Zinn
Author of Marx in Soho
Links, Comments and Information about Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn grew up in a working-class family in Brooklyn
where he became a shipyard laborer and later, in World War
Two, n decorated Air Force bombardier. After the War, Zinn
was educated at Columbia University in New York under the GI
Bill and earned his PhD in history, then taught in Georgia
during the 1950s.
He has also been a history fellow at Harvard University and a visiting professor at the University of Paris and the University of Bologna. In the late 1960s, he began teaching at Boston University in the political science department, and he and Noam Chomsky (of MIT) were two of the nation’s most prominent academics in opposition to the war in Vietnam; in the ’70s and ’80s he was a critic of U.S. policy in Central America; and in the ’90s he was a critic of the Gulf War.
Professor Zinn has won numerous awards and honors including The Thomas Merton Award, The Eugene V. Debs Award, The Upton Sinclair Award and The Lannan Literary Award.
In a career that has spanned over forty years, Howard Zinn, as a professor, radical historian, progressive political theorist, social activist, playwright and author, has brought a fresh, thoughtful, humane and common-sensical approach to the study and teaching of history.
Zinn’s book sought to tell the story of the United States from the perspective of the disenfranchised minorities rather than the more traditional perspective of the powerful elite. His social activism and written works have earned him scorn over the years, but his history book is a standard text in many U. S. high schools and he has had a strong influence on the public’s perception of Columbus, the Founding Fathers and American foreign policy.
Among his twenty books and plays are La
Guardia in Congress, Disobedience
and Democracy, The Politics
of History, The Pentagon Papers:
Critical Essays, Declarations of
Independence: Cross Examining
American Ideology, You Can’t
Be Neutral On A Moving Train
(his autobiography), The Zinn
Reader, Marx in Soho and the
seminal, celebrated A People’s
History of the United States:
1492 to the Present. He lives
with his wife, Roslyn, in Mass.
Zinn Links
Howard Zinn Site
Howard Zinn in Cuba
Wikipedia about Zinn
Site about Zinn
Howard Zinn material on line
Critical Thinker's resource
An Article about Zinn
Z Net Zinn Commentaries
Howard Zinn INterview
Marx in Soho, Iron Age Theatre and Howard Zinnn at Wikipedia
Zinn Quotes
“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”
“If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.”
"People are practical. They want change but feel powerless, alone, do not want to be the blade of grass that sticks up above the others and is cut down. They wait for a sign from someone else who will make the first move, or the second. And at certain times in history, there are intrepid people who take the risk that if they make that first move others will follow quickly enough to prevent their being cut down. And if we understand this, we might make that first move."
"the high school years must be the most important years in shaping the social consciousness of young people, because at no other level do parents and school officials become more hysterical at the possibility that the students will be exposed to ideas which challenge the authority of governemnt, of school administrations, of parents."
"If those in charge of our society -- politicians, corporate
executives, and owners of press and television -- can dominate our
ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need
soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves."
What normally operates day by day is the quiet dominance of certain ideas, the ideas we are expected to hold by our neighbors, our employers, and our political leaders; the ones we quickly learn are the most acceptable. The result is an obedient, acquiescent, passive citizenry-a situation that is deadly to democracy.
If one day we decide to reexamine these beliefs and realize they do not come naturally out of our innermost feelings or our spontaneous desires, are not the result of independent thought on our part, and, indeed, do not match the real world as we experience it, then we have come to an important turning point in life. Then we find ourselves examining, and confronting, American ideology.
Tom Paine, in America, saw war as the creature of governments, serving their own interests, not the interests of justice for their citizens. "Man is not the enemy of man but through the medium of a false system of government."