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Howard Zinn (born August 24, 1922) is a professor, political scientist, historian, social critic, democratic socialist, activist and playwright, best known as author of the bestseller A People's History of the United States.
Zinn has been active in the movements for Civil Rights, Civil Liberties and the anti-war movements in the United States. He has written extensively on all three subjects.
The author of some 20 books, Zinn is Professor Emeritus in the Political Science Department at Boston University. He lives in the Auburndale neighborhood of Newton, Massachusetts.
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The term 'just war' contains an internal contradiction. War is inherently unjust, and the great challenge of our time is how to deal with evil, tyranny, and oppression without killing huge numbers of people.
Terrorism and War (2002)
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Howard Zinn (born August 24, 1922) is a professor, political scientist, historian, social critic, democratic socialist, activist and playwright, best known as author of the bestseller A People's History of the United States.
Zinn has been active in the movements for Civil Rights, Civil Liberties and the anti-war movements in the United States. He has written extensively on all three subjects.
The author of some 20 books, Zinn is Professor Emeritus in the Political Science Department at Boston University. He lives in the Auburndale neighborhood of Newton, Massachusetts. His late wife of 64 years, Roslyn Zinn, died on May 14, 2008 at their home. An artist and editor, Roslyn had a role in editing all of Zinn's books and many of his articles. Zinn has two children, Myla and Jeff, and five grandchildren.
Biography
Early life
Howard Zinn was born to a Jewish immigrant family in Brooklyn. His father, Eddie Zinn, born in Austria-Hungary, emigrated to the United States with his brother Phil before the outbreak of World War I. Howard's mother Jenny Zinn emigrated from the Eastern Siberian city of Irkutsk.
Both parents were factory workers with limited education when they met and married, and there were no books or magazines in the series of apartments where they raised their children. Zinn's parents introduced him to literature by sending 25 cents plus a coupon to the New York Post for each of the 20 volumes of Charles Dickens' collected works. He also studied creative writing at Thomas Jefferson High School in a special program established by poet Elias Lieberman.
As a young adult, Zinn worked as a shipyard worker and labor organizer in the Brooklyn shipyards. Later, Zinn was a bombardier aboard a B-17 with the 490th Bombardment Group, and conducted bombing missions in Europe during World War II. Zinn's participation in these missions shaped his later opposition to war and aerial bombing.
After World War II, Zinn attended New York University on the GI Bill, graduating with a B.A. in 1951 and Columbia University, where he earned an M.A. (1952) and Ph.D. in history with a minor in political science (1958). His doctoral dissertation LaGuardia in Congress was a study of Fiorello LaGuardia's congressional career, and depicted LaGuardia representing "the conscience of the twenties" as LaGuardia fought for public power, the right to strike, and the redistribution of wealth by taxation. "His specific legislative program," Zinn wrote, "was an astonishingly accurate preview of the New Deal." It was published by the Cornell University Press for the American Historical Association.
Military service
Zinn was second Lieutenant and bombardier, U.S. Army Air Corps; Zinn flew combat missions in Europe 1943-45.
Education
Zinn obtained his B.A. from New York University in 1951, his M.A. and Ph.D. in Columbia University in 1952 and 1958 respectively. He was also a Post-doctoral Fellow in East Asian Studies at Harvard University from 1960 to 61.
Career
Zinn was Professor of History, Spelman College, Atlanta, GA from 1956 to 1963. Later he was Professor of Political Science, Boston University from 1964 to 1988. He is the Visiting Professor and Rhodes Scholar at both the University of Paris and University of Bologna
Civil Rights movement
In 1956, Zinn was appointed chairman of the department of history and social sciences at Spelman College, where he participated in the Civil Rights movement. For example, Zinn lobbied with historian August Meier "to end the practice of the Southern Historical Association of holding meetings at segregated hotels.
At Spelman, Zinn served as an adviser to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and, in 1964, later wrote the book SNCC: The New Abolitionists.
At Spelman, Zinn collaborated with historian Staughton Lynd and mentored young student activists, among them writer Alice Walker and Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund. In a journal article, Edelman discusses Zinn as major influence in her life and she tells of his accompanying students to a sit-in at the segregated white section of the Georgia state legislature.
Although Zinn was a tenured professor, he was dismissed, in June 1963, after siding with students in their desire to challenge Spelman's traditional emphasis of turning out "young ladies" when, as Zinn described in an article in The Nation, Spelman students were likely to be found on the picket line, or in jail for participating in the greater effort to break down segregation in public places in Atlanta. Zinn's years at Spelman are recounted in his autobiography You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times. His seven years at Spelman College, Zinn said, "are probably the most interesting, exciting, most educational years for me. I learned more from my students than my students learned from me."
While at Spelman, Zinn wrote that he observed 30 violations of the First and Fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution in Albany, Georgia, including the rights to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and equal protection of the laws. In an article on the civil rights movement in Albany, Zinn described the people who participated in the Freedom Rides to end segregation, and of the reluctance of President John F. Kennedy to enforce the law. Zinn has also pointed out that the Justice Department under Robert F. Kennedy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, headed by J. Edgar Hoover, did little to nothing to stop the segregationists from brutalizing civil rights workers.
Zinn wrote frequently about the struggle for civil rights, both as a participant and historian His second book, The Southern Mystique was published in the same year as his book on the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), 1964. In the book on SNCC, Zinn describes how the sit-ins against segregation were initiated by students and, in that sense, independent of the older, more established civil rights organizations.
He returned to Spelman in 2005 to give the commencement address. His speech "Against Discouragement," is available online at numerous sources.
Anti-war efforts
Fresh from writing two books about his research, observations, and participation in the Civil Rights movement in the South, Zinn accepted a position in the political science department at Boston University in 1964. His classes in civil liberties were among the most popular offered at BU with as many as 400 students subscribing each semester to the non-required class. He taught at BU for 24 years and retired in 1988. Zinn wrote one of the earliest books calling for the U.S. withdrawal from its war in VietNam. VietNam: The Logic of Withdrawal was published by Beacon Press in 1967 after articles that would later form the basis for the book had appeared in Commonweal, The Nation, The Register-Leader, and Ramparts.
Zinn eagerly joined the Army Air Force during World War II to fight fascism, and he bombed targets in Berlin, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Zinn's anti-war stance was, in part, informed by his own experiences in the military. In April, 1945, he participated in one of the first military uses of napalm, which took place in Royan, France. The bombings were aimed at German soldiers who were, in Zinn's words, hiding and waiting out the closing days of the war. The attacks killed not only the German soldiers but also French civilians, facts Zinn uncovered nine years after the bombings when he visited Royan to examine documents and interview residents. In his books, The Politics of History and The Zinn Reader, he described how the bombing was ordered at the war's end by decision-makers most probably motivated by the desire for career advancement rather than for legitimate military objectives.
Zinn said his experience as a bombardier, combined with his research into the reasons for and effects of the bombing of Royan, sensitized him to the ethical dilemmas faced by G.I.s during wartime. Zinn questioned the justifications for military operations inflicting civilian casualties in the Allied bombing of cities such as Dresden, Royan, Tokyo, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II, Hanoi during the U.S. war in Vietnam, and Baghdad during the U.S. war in Iraq. In his pamphlet "Hiroshima: Breaking the Silence", Zinn laid out the case against targeting civilians.
Vietnam
Zinn's diplomatic visit to Hanoi with Rev. Daniel Berrigan, during the Tet Offensive in January 1968, resulted in the return of three American airmen, the first American POWs released by the North Vietnamese since the U.S. bombing of that nation had begun. The event was widely reported in the news media and discussed in a variety of books including Who Spoke Up? American Protest Against the War in Vietnam 1963-1975 by Nancy Zaroulis and Gerald Sullivan . Zinn remained friends and allies with the brothers Dan and Philip over the years.
Daniel Ellsberg, a former RAND consultant who had secretly copied The Pentagon Papers, which described internal planning and policy decisions of the United States in the Vietnam War, gave a copy of them to Howard and Roslyn Zinn. Along with Noam Chomsky, Zinn edited and annotated the copy of The Pentagon Papers that Ellsberg entrusted to him. Zinn's longtime publisher, Beacon Press, published what has come to be known as the Senator Mike Gravel edition of The Pentagon Papers, four volumes plus a fifth volume with analysis by Chomsky and Zinn. Later, when their granddaughter worked to improve conditions for janitors at Wesleyan, the couple supported the effort.
At Ellsberg's criminal trial for theft, conspiracy, and espionage in connection with the publication of the Pentagon Papers by The New York Times, defense attorneys called Zinn as an expert witness to explain to the jury the history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam from World War II to 1963. Zinn discussed that history for several hours, later reflecting on his time before the jury. "I explained there was nothing in the papers of military significance that could be used to harm the defense of the United States, that the information in them was simply embarrassing to our government because what was revealed, in the government's own interoffice memos, was how it had lied to the American public. The secrets disclosed in the Pentagon Papers might embarrass politicians, might hurt the profits of corporations wanting tin, rubber, oil, in far-off places. But this was not the same as hurting the nation, the people," Zinn wrote in his autobiography. Most of the jurors later said they voted for acquittal. [p. 161] However, the federal judge dismissed the case on the grounds it had been tainted by the burglary by President Richard M. Nixon's administration of the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist.
Zinn's testimony as to the motivation for government secrecy was confirmed in 1989 by Erwin Griswold, who as U.S. solicitor general during the Nixon administration, prosecuted The New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case in 1971. Griswold persuaded three Supreme Court justices to vote to stop The New York Times from continuing to publish the Pentagon Papers, an order known as "prior restraint" that has been held to be illegal under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The papers were simultaneously published in The Washington Post, effectively nulling the effect of the prior restraint order. In 1989, Griswold admitted there was no national security damage from publication of the papersIn a column in the Washington Post, Griswold wrote: "It quickly becomes apparent to any person who has considerable experience with classified material that there is massive over classification and that the principal concern of the classifiers is not with national security, but with governmental embarrassment of one sort or another."
Zinn supported the G.I. antiwar movement during the U.S. war in Vietnam. In the 2001 film Unfinished Symphony, Zinn provides historical context for the 1971 antiwar march by Vietnam Veterans against the War.
The marchers traveled from Lexington, Massachusetts, to Bunker Hill, "which retraced Paul Revere's ride of 1775 and ended in the massive arrest of 410 veterans and civilians by the Lexington police." The film depicts "scenes from the 1971 , during which former G.I.s testified about atrocities" they either participated in or witnessed in Vietnam.
Iraq
Zinn opposed the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and has written several books about it. He asserts that the U.S. will end its war with, and occupation of, Iraq when resistance within the military increases, in the same way resistance within the military contributed to ending the U.S. war in Vietnam. He compares the demand by a growing number of contemporary U.S. military families to end the war in Iraq to the parallel "in the Confederacy in the Civil War, when the wives of soldiers rioted because their husbands were dying and the plantation owners were profiting from the sale of cotton, refusing to grow grains for civilians to eat." Zinn argued that "There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people for a purpose which is unattainable."
Jean-Christophe Agnew, Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University, told the Yale Daily News in May 2007 that Zinn’s historical work is "highly influential and widely used". He observed that it is not unusual for prominent professors such as Zinn to weigh in on current events, citing a resolution opposing the war in Iraq that was recently ratified by the American Historical Association. Agnew added, “In these moments of crisis, when the country is split — so historians are split.”
A People's History of the United States
As a historian, Zinn came to believe that the point of view expressed in traditional history books was often limited. He wrote a history textbook, A People's History of the United States with the goal to provide other perspectives of American history. The textbook depicts the struggles of Native Americans against European and U.S. conquest and expansion, slaves against slavery, unionists and other workers against capitalists, women against patriarchy, and African-Americans for civil rights.
In the years since the first edition of A People's History was published in 1980, it has been used as an alternative to standard textbooks in many high school and college history courses, and is one of the most widely known examples of critical pedagogy. According to the New York Times Book Review it "routinely sells more than 100,000 copies a year".
In the spring of 2003, to commemorate the sale of the millionth copy of A People's History, a dramatic reading was held at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. The reading featured Danny Glover, Andre Gregory, James Earl Jones, actress Myla Pitt, Marisa Tomei, Kurt Vonnegut, Alice Walker, Alfre Woodard, Harris Yulin, Jeff Zinn, producing artistic director of the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater , and Howard Zinn as narrator. The event aired on Democracy Now!, and was hosted by Amy Goodman, and is online at The program was also released as a book and CD under the title, The People Speak: American Voices, Some Famous, Some Little Known.
Interwoven with commentary by Zinn, both the book and the dramatic reading upon which the newer book is based, includes passages from Zinn's research in A People's History of the United States on Christopher Columbus on the Arawaks; Plough Jogger, a farmer and participant in Shays' Rebellion; Harriet Hanson, a Lowell mill worker; Frederick Douglass; Mark Twain; Mary Harris "Mother" Jones; Emma Goldman; Helen Keller; Eugene V. Debs; Langston Hughes; Genova Johnson Dollinger on a sit-down strike at General Motors in Flint, Michigan; an interrogation from a 1953 HUAC hearing; Fannie Lou Hamer, a sharecropper and member of the Freedom Democratic Party; Malcolm X; and James Lawrence Harrington, a Gulf War resister, among others.
Kurt Vonnegut read the words of Mark Twain at the event celebrating the work of Zinn, a fellow World War II veteran. Vonnegut read from Twain, who spoke out after President Theodore Roosevelt congratulated a general involved in the 1906 Moro Crater massacre in the Philippines.
"It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make these people free and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way; and so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land," Vonnegut quoted Twain during the reading.
In 2004, Zinn published Voices of A People's History of the United States with Anthony Arnove. Voices expands on the concept and provides a large collection of dissident voices in long form. The book is intended as a companion to A People's History and parallels its structure.
Zinn was a consultant to the six-part documentary A People's History of the United States , a television series produced by Alvin H. Perlmutter. According to the documentary's website, the series is expected to be broadcast in 2007.
After years of requests from parents and teachers for a younger readers' version of A People's History, in July 2007 Seven Stories Press has published A Young People's History of the United States, a two-volume, illustrated adaptation of the original text for young adult readers (ages 10-14), updated through the end of 2006.
Critical reception
When A People's History of the United States was first published in 1980, the New York Times reviewer, Columbia University historian Eric Foner, described the book as filled with telling quotations and vivid descriptions of usually ignored events, and said that "Zinn writes with an enthusiasm rarely encountered in the leaden prose of academic history." However, referring to Zinn's focus on "the distinctive experience of blacks, women, Indians,
workers and other neglected groups," Foner said, "The portrayal of these anonymous Americans is strangely circumscribed. Blacks, Indians, women and laborers appear either as rebels or as victims. Less dramatic but more typical lives — people struggling to survive with dignity in difficult circumstances — receive little attention", adding, "A People's History reflects a deeply pessimistic vision of the American experience." Summing up, Foner found the approach to be limited, and said further that the book needed "an integrated account incorporating Thomas Jefferson and his slaves, Andrew Jackson and the Indians, Woodrow Wilson and the Wobblies."
Writing in the Washington Post Book World, reviewer Michael Kammen, a professor of American History at Cornell, wrote: "I wish that I could pronounce Zinn's book a great success, but it is not. It is a synthesis of the radical and revisionist historiography of the past decade. . . Not only does the book read like a scissors and paste-pot job, but even less attractive, so much attention to historians, historiography and historical polemic leaves precious little space for the substance of history. . . . We do deserve a people's history; but not a singleminded, simpleminded history, too often of fools, knaves and Robin Hoods. We need a judicious people's history because the people are entitled to have their history whole; not just those parts that will anger or embarrass them. . . . If that is asking for the moon, then we will cheerfully settle for balanced history."
In a 2004 article in Dissent critiquing the 5th edition of A People's History of the United States, Georgetown University history professor Michael Kazin argued that Zinn's book is too focused on class conflict, and wrongly attributes sinister motives to the American political elite. He also characterized the book as an overly simplistic narrative of elite villains and oppressed people, with no attempt to understand historical actors in the context of the time in which they lived. Kazin writes, "The ironic effect of such portraits of rulers is to rob 'the people' of cultural richness and variety, characteristics that might gain the respect and not just the sympathy of contemporary readers. For Zinn, ordinary Americans seem to live only to fight the rich and haughty and, inevitably, to be fooled by them."
Awards, references in pop culture and other accomplishments
- Zinn has received the Thomas Merton Award and the Eugene V. Debs Award. In 1998, he won the Lannan Literary Award for nonfiction and the following year won the Upton Sinclair Award, which honors social activism. In 2003, Zinn was awarded the Prix des Amis du Monde diplomatique for the French version of his seminal work, Une histoire populaire des Etats-Unis.
- On October 5, 2006, Howard Zinn received the Haven's Center Award for Lifetime Contribution to Critical Scholarship in Madison, Wisconsin.
- Zinn's autobiography is You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train. A biographical documentary film called Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train (2004) was shown in select theaters. The film, on DVD, by Deb Ellis and Denis Mueller contains music composed by Richard Martinez and features music by Billy Bragg, Woodie Guthrie, and Pearl Jam. The film includes footage of Howard and Roslyn Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Marian Wright Edelman, Daniel Ellsberg, Tom Hayden and Alice Walker. The 78-minute film on DVD includes these special features: On Human Nature and Aggression; Zinn's speech at Veterans for Peace Conference, 2004; and audio of his 1971 speech at the Boston Common on Civil Disobedience. In the film, Noam Chomsky says Zinn "changed the consciousness of a generation."
- The film was narrated by actor Matt Damon who lived next door to the Zinns as a child in West Newton, Massachusetts. Damon included a reference to A People's History in his film Good Will Hunting. In a confrontation with his psychologist, played by Robin Williams, Damon's character tells him: "If you want to read a real history book, read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. That book will knock you on your ass." Damon also read the latter half of People's History for an audiobook released February 1, 2003 (ISBN 0-06-053006-5). People's History was referenced in a Columbus Day episode of the TV show The Sopranos.
- Zinn is a featured interview in the documentary Sacco and Vanzetti, which was shown in theaters in the U.S. in 2007.
- In October 2005, Chicago's indie punk label Thick Records released a CD called You Can't Blow Up A Social Relationship by Springfield-based indie rock band, Resident Genius, featuring excerpts from several Zinn talks. The six Zinn excerpts are "a greatest hits of his speeches recorded over the last 15 years by Roger Leisner of Radio Free Maine. They touch on his 'usual' topics of engaged activism, history from below, war, the media and much more."
- Zinn's You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train is mentioned in System of a Down's song, "Deer Dance". The line "You can't be neutral on a moving train" is the basis for the Pearl Jam B-Side "Down".
- Zinn has expressed support for Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich as well as his efforts to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney.
- The Pearl Jam song "Down" from the album Lost Dogs was inspired by the band's friendship with Zinn.
- Zinn was one of the few intellectuals or celebrities to endorse Ralph Nader in the 2008 Presidential election.
Theatrical works
Zinn has written three plays: Daughter of Venus (1985), Emma (1976), and Marx in Soho (1999).
Emma is based on the life of the early 20th century anarchist Emma Goldman. Goldman, an anarchist, feminist, and free-spirited thinker was exiled from the United States because of her viewpoints, including her staunch opposition to World War I. As Zinn writes in his Introduction, Emma Goldman 'seemed to be tireless as she traveled the country, lecturing to large audiences everywhere, on birth control (‘A woman should decide for herself’), on the falsity of marriage as an institution (‘Marriage has nothing to do with love’), on patriotism (‘the last refuge of a scoundrel’) on free love (‘What is love if not free?’), and also on drama, including Shaw, Ibsen, and Strindberg'.
Zinn has praised Vermont-based theater troupe Bread and Puppet Theater and appeared with B&P founder Peter Schumann and providing a critical blurb for Rehearsing with the Gods, a book on B&P .
Zinn received an acting credit for appearing in the ensemble of David Hare's Stuff Happens at the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater on the five year anniversary of 9/11 .
Books written or edited by Howard Zinn
Books
- Artists in Times of War (2003) ISBN 1-58322-602-8
- The Cold War & the University: Toward an Intellectual History of the Postwar Years (Noam Chomsky (Editor) Authors: Ira Katznelson, R. C. Lewontin, David Montgomery, Laura Nader, Richard Ohmann, Ray Siever, Immanuel Wallerstein, Howard Zinn (1997) ISBN 1-56584-005-4
- Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology (1991) ISBN 0-06-092108-0
- Disobedience and Democracy: Nine Fallacies on Law and Order (1968, re-issued 2002) ISBN 0-89608-675-5
- Emma: A Play in Two Acts About Emma Goldman, American Anarchist (2002) ISBN 0-89608-664-X
- Failure to Quit: Reflections of an Optimistic Historian (1993) ISBN 0-89608-676-3
- The Future of History: Interviews With David Barsamian (1999) ISBN 1-56751-157-0
- Hiroshima: Breaking the Silence ISBN 1-884519-14-8
- Howard Zinn On Democratic Education Donaldo Macedo, Editor (2004) ISBN 1-59451-054-7
- Howard Zinn on History (2000) ISBN 1-58322-048-8
- Howard Zinn on War (2000) ISBN 1-58322-049-6
- Justice in Everyday Life: The Way It Really Works (Editor) (1974) ISBN 0-89608-677-1
- Justice? Eyewitness Accounts (1977) ISBN 0-8070-4479-2
- La Otra Historia De Los Estados Unidos (2000) ISBN 1-58322-054-2
- LaGuardia in Congress (1959) ISBN 0-8371-6434-6, ISBN 0-393-00488-0
- Marx in Soho: A Play on History (1999) ISBN 0-89608-593-7
- New Deal Thought (editor) (1965) ISBN 0-87220-685-8
- Original Zinn: Conversations on History and Politics (2006) Howard Zinn and David Barsamian.
- Passionate Declarations: Essays on War and Justice (2003) ISBN 0-06-055767-2
- The Pentagon Papers Senator Gravel Edition. Vol. Five. Critical Essays. Boston. Beacon Press, 1972. 341p. plus 72p. of Index to Vol. I-IV of the Papers, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, editors
- A People's History of the Civil War: Struggles for the Meaning of Freedom by David Williams, Howard Zinn (Series Editor) (2005) ISBN 1-59558-018-2
- A People's History of the United States: 1492 – Present (1980), revised (1995)(1998)(1999)(2003) ISBN 0-06-052837-0
- A People's History of the United States: Teaching Edition Abridged (2003 updated) ISBN 1-56584-826-8
- A People's History of the United States: The Civil War to the Present Kathy Emery Ellen Reeves Howard Zinn (2003 teaching edition) ISBN 1-56584-725-3
- A People's History of the United States: The Wall Charts by Howard Zinn and George Kirschner (1995) ISBN 1-56584-171-9
- A People's History of American Empire (2008) by Howard Zinn, Mike Konopacki and Paul Buhle. ISBN 978-0805087444
- The People Speak: American Voices, Some Famous, Some Little Known (2004) ISBN 0-06-057826-2
- Playbook by Maxine Klein, Lydia Sargent and Howard Zinn (1986) ISBN 0-89608-309-8
- The Politics of History (1970) (2nd edition 1990) ISBN 0-252-06122-5
- Postwar America: 1945 – 1971 (1973) ISBN 0-89608-678-X
- A Power Governments Cannot Suppress (2006) ISBN 978-0872864757
- The Power of Nonviolence: Writings by Advocates of Peace Editor (2002) ISBN 0-8070-1407-9
- SNCC: The New Abolitionists (1964) ISBN 0-89608-679-8
- The Southern Mystique (1962) ISBN 0-89608-680-1
- Terrorism and War (2002) ISBN 1-58322-493-9 (interviews, Anthony Arnove (Ed.))
- The Twentieth Century: A People's History (2003) ISBN 0-06-053034-0
- Three Strikes: Miners, Musicians, Salesgirls, and the Fighting Spirit of Labor's Last Century (Dana Frank, Robin Kelley, and Howard Zinn) (2002) ISBN 0-8070-5013-X
- Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal (1967) ISBN 0-89608-681-X
- Voices of a People’s History of the United States (with Anthony Arnove, 2004) ISBN 1-58322-647-8
- You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times (1994) ISBN 0-8070-7127-7
- A Young People's History of the United States, adapted from the original text by Rebecca Stefoff; illustrated and updated through 2006, with new introduction and afterward by Howard Zinn; two volumes, Seven Stories Press, New York, 2007.
- Vol. 1: Columbus to the Spanish-American War. ISBN 978-1-58322-759-6
- Vol. 2: Class Struggle to the War on Terror. ISBN 978-1-58322-760-2
- The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy (1997) ISBN 1-888363-54-1
Forewords and introductions by Howard Zinn
- A Gigantic Mistake by Mickey Z, (2004) ISBN 1-930997-97-3
- A People's History of the Supreme Court by Peter H. Irons (2000) ISBN 0-14-029201-2
- A Political Dynasty In North Idaho, 1933-1967 by Randall Doyle (2004) ISBN 0-7618-2843-5
- American Political Prisoners: Prosecutions Under the Espionage and Sedition Acts by Stephen M. Kohn (1994) ISBN 0-275-94415-8
- American Power and the New Mandarins by Noam Chomsky (2002) ISBN 1-56584-775-X
- Broken Promises Of America: At Home And Abroad, Past And Present: An Encyclopedia For Our Times by (Douglas F. Dowd (2004) ISBN 1-56751-313-1
- Deserter From Death: Dispatches From Western Europe 1950-2000 by Daniel Singer (2005) ISBN 1-56025-642-7
- Ecocide of Native America: Environmental Destruction of Indian Lands and Peoples by Donald Grinde, Bruce Johansen (1994) ISBN 0-940666-52-9
- Eugene V. Debs Reader: Socialism and the Class Struggle by William A. Pelz (2000) ISBN 0-9704669-0-0
- From a Native Son: Selected Essays in Indigenism, 1985 – 1995 by Ward Churchill (1996) ISBN 0-89608-553-8
- Green Parrots: A War Surgeon's Diary by Gino Strada, (2005) ISBN 88-8158-420-4
- Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear And The Selling Of American Empire by Sut Jhally editor, Jeremy Earp editor, (2004) ISBN 1-56656-581-2
- If You're Not a Terrorist…Then Stop Asking Questions! by Micah Ian Wright, (2004) ISBN 1-58322-626-5
- Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal by Anthony Arnove, (2006) ISBN 978-1-59558-079-5
- Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney Dennis Loo (Editor), Peter Phillips (Editor) Seven Stories Press: 2006) ISBN 1583227431
- Life of an Anarchist: The Alexander Berkman Reader by Alexander Berkman Gene Fellner, editor, (2004) ISBN 1-58322-662-1
- Long Shadows: Veterans' Paths to Peace by David Giffey editor, (2006) ISBN 1-89185-964-9
- Masters of War: Latin America and United States Aggression from the Cuban Revolution Through the Clinton Years by Clara Nieto, Chris Brandt (trans) (2003) ISBN 1-58322-545-5
- Peace Signs: The Anti-War Movement Illustrated by James Mann, editor (2004) ISBN 3-283-00487-0
- Prayer for the Morning Headlines: On the Sanctity of Life and Death by Daniel Berrigan (poetry) and Adrianna Amari (photography), (2007) ISBN 978-1-934074-16-9
- Silencing Political Dissent: How Post-9-11 Anti-terrorism Measures Threaten Our Civil Liberties by Nancy Chang, Center for Constitutional Rights (2002) ISBN 1-58322-494-7
- Soldiers In Revolt: GI Resistance During The Vietnam War by David Cortright, (2005) ISBN 1-931859-27-2
- Sold to the Highest Bidder: The Presidency from Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush by Daniel M. Friedenberg (2002) ISBN 1-57392-923-9
- The Autobiography of Abbie Hoffman Intro by Norman Mailer, Afterword by HZ (2000) ISBN 1-56858-197-1
- The Case for Socialism by Alan Maass, (2004) ISBN 1-931859-09-4
- The Forging of the American Empire: From the Revolution to Vietnam, a History of U.S. Imperialism by Sidney Lens (2003) ISBN 0-7453-2101-1
- The Higher Law: Thoreau on Civil Disobedience and Reform by Henry David Thoreau Wendell Glick, editor, (2004) ISBN 0-691-11876-0
- The Iron Heel by Jack London, (1971) ISBN 0-143-03971-7
- The Sixties Experience: Hard Lessons about Modern America by Edward P. Morgan, (1992) ISBN 1-56639-014-1
- You Back the Attack, We'll Bomb Who We Want by Micah Ian Wright, (2003) ISBN 1-58322-584-6
- A People's History of the American Revolution by Ray Raphael, (2002) ISBN 0-06-000440-1 Howard Zinn Foreword for New Press People's History Series
Op-Ed Pieces
- , New York Times, Sunday Review of Books Zinn criticized the alleged moral distinction between civilian deaths by aerial bombings and those caused by suicide bombings as "illogical".
Compact discs
- A People's History of the United States (1999)
- Artists in the Time of War (2002)
- Heroes & Martyrs: Emma Goldman, Sacco & Vanzetti, and the Revolutionary Struggle (2000)
- Stories Hollywood Never Tells (2000)
- You Can't Blow Up A Social Relationship - split CD featuring Zinn talks and noted indie rock band Resident genius (Thick Records) (2005)
Zinn is currently on the Alternative Tentacles record label run by former Dead Kennedys vocalist Jello Biafra. Alternative Tentacles sells all forms of Zinn media, including books, films, and compact discs, and stocks hard-to-find Zinn material.
Biographies and profiles
- by Davis D. Joyce, foreword by Noam Chomsky, Prometheus Books, 2003. ISBN 1-59102-131-6
- Biographic film by Deb Ellis and Denis Mueller (2004)
External links
- , November 27, 2003, National Public Radio
- , Michael Kazin
- and featuring Howard Zinn at
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