New Releases by Howard Zinn

An indispensable study of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee from the author of the bestselling A People''s History of the United States. SNCC: The New Abolitionists influenced a generation of activists struggling for civil rights and seeking to learn from the successes and failures of those who built the fantastically influential Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. It is considered an indispensable study of the organization and the social movements of the 1960s. Zinn’s documentation of the process of social change is an indispensable resource for activists who are continuing in the tradition of SNCC to fight for a more just world. This edition includes a new foreword from Anthony Arnove situating Howard Zinn''s work and legacy for today’s activists and an afterword from Barbara Ransby reflecting on the enduring importance of SNCC’s organizing and Zinn’s role in documenting many of the social justice movements of the 1960s.

La brillante y conmovedora historia del pueblo estadounidense para lectores de escuela intermedia y secundaria, ahora revisada y actualizada para el centenario del nacimiento de Howard Zinn. La historia del pueblo de Estados Unidos para jóvenes cuenta las historias de obreros, personas esclavizadas, inmigrantes, mujeres, personas negras, latinoamericanos, asiaticoestadounidenses, indígenas estadounidenses y otros que comúnmente son excluidos de libros de texto pero que constituyen parte de la fuerza impulsora de la historia de nuestra nación. Comenzando con un vistazo a la llegada de Cristóbal Colón desde la perspectiva de los indígenas arahuacos, atravesando las luchas por los derechos civiles, derechos de los trabajadores y derechos de las mujeres a lo largo de los siglos diecinueve y veinte y concluyendo con los movimientos sociales actuales que exigen acción contra el cambio climática y justicia racdeial, Zinn propone una nueva y radical manera de comprender la historia de los Estados Unidos. Al hacerlo, les recuerda a los lectores que el camino de los Estados Unidos puede ser trazado por el pueblo en vez de los generales militares o los políticos. Esta edición revisada y actualizada incluye nuevos capítulos sobre la historia de los latinos en los Estados Unidos de Ed Morales, así como también actualizaciones y revisiones cortas a lo largo del texto de Rebecca Stefoff.

Pocos hombres han sido tan fieles al compromiso con la vida, la libertad y sus semejantes desfavorecidos como Howard Zinn. Parece improbable que un profesor de historia se vea involucrado, o incluso sea protagonista, de tantas peripecias y aventuras como él lo fue. Bombardero en la Segunda Guerra Mundial, profesor en una institución para mujeres afroamericanas durante la lucha por los derechos civiles en el sur de los EE.UU., activista antibélico y enviado a Hanoi durante la Guerra de Vietnam, protector del hombre que sustrajo los Papeles del Pentágono… Estas y otras son las estaciones de una vida intensa y plena de compromiso con la vida y las personas que le llevaron innumerables veces a la cárcel y fueron la causa de numeroso intentos de descrédito. Una vida vivida, nunca neutral ni objetiva. Porque solo los objetos pueden ser objetivos, mientras que los sujetos solo podemos poseer el intransferible néctar de la subjetividad. La historia del siglo XX vista a través de los ojos y vivencias de uno de los historiadores más eminentes del mundo. Unas memorias que se leen como una novela de aventuras que nos enseñan cómo en tiempos convulsos, en los que parece que el mundo carece de asideros fiables y referentes, pueden existir seres humanos comprometidos y esperanzados que nos recuerden el papel protagonista del ciudadano y su infinita fuerza para cambiar las cosas. “Si estás abrumado y enojado por las atrocidades de nuestro tiempo, esto inspirará a una nueva generación de activistas y personas comunes que buscan esperanza en la oscuridad”. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. “El trabajo de Howard Zinn literalmente cambió la conciencia de una generación”. Noam Chomsky. Un libro poderoso y políticamente electrizante de uno de los críticos sociales más atractivos”. Jonathan Kozol. "Una historia y un hacedor de historia para darnos esperanza". Alice Walker. "¡Toma este libro! ¡Empieza a leerlo! Te garantizo que no te detendrás. El maestro más influyente que he tenido continúa enseñándonos sobre la vida, la humanidad y la esperanza". Marian Wright Edelman."

A Young People''s History of the United States brings to US history the viewpoints of workers, enslaved people, immigrants, women, Black people, Latino Americans, Asian Americans, American Indians, and others whose stories, and their impact, are rarely included in books for young people. Beginning with a look at Christopher Columbus’s arrival through the eyes of the Arawak Indians, then leading the reader through the struggles for workers’ rights, women’s rights, and civil rights during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and ending with the current protests against continued American imperialism, Zinn presents a radical new way of understanding America’s history. In so doing, he reminds readers that America’s true greatness is shaped by our dissident voices, not our military generals. A Young People''s History of the United States is also a companion volume to The People Speak, the film adapted from A People''s History of the United States and Voices of a People’s History of the United States.

American history told from the bottom up by Howard Zinn himself—and the perfect all-ages introduction to his eye-opening viewpoint, published on Zinn’s hundredth birthday Truth Has a Power of Its Own is an engrossing collection of conversations with the late Howard Zinn and “an eloquently hopeful introduction for those who haven’t yet encountered Zinn’s work” (Booklist). Here is an unvarnished, yet ultimately optimistic, tour of American history—told by someone who was often an active participant in it. Viewed through the lens of Zinn’s own life as a soldier, historian, and activist and using his paradigm-shifting A People’s History of the United States as a point of departure, these conversations explore the American Revolution, the Civil War, the labor battles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, U.S. imperialism from the Indian Wars to the War on Terrorism, World Wars I and II, the Cold War, and the fight for equality and immigrant rights—all from an unapologetically radical standpoint. Longtime admirers and a new generation of readers alike will be fascinated to learn about Zinn’s thought processes, rationale, motivations, and approach to his now-iconic historical work. Zinn’s humane (and often humorous) voice—along with his keen moral vision—shine through every one of these lively and thought-provoking conversations. Battles over the telling of our history still rage across the country, and there’s no better person to tell it than Howard Zinn.

If you’re both overcome and angered by the atrocities of our time, this will inspire a “new generation of activists and ordinary people who search for hope in the darkness” (Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor). Is change possible? Where will it come from? Can we actually make a difference? How do we remain hopeful? Howard Zinn—activist, historian, and author of A People’s History of the United States—was a participant in and chronicler of some of the landmark struggles for racial and economic justice in US history. In his memoir, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train, Zinn reflects on more than thirty years of fighting for social change, from his teenage years as a laborer in Brooklyn to teaching at Spelman College, where he emerged in the civil rights movement as a powerful voice for justice. A former bombardier in World War II, he later became an outspoken antiwar activist, spirited protestor, and champion of civil disobedience. Throughout his life, Zinn was unwavering in his belief that “small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.” With a foreword from activist and scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, this revised edition will inspire a new generation of readers to believe that change is possible.

"Cohen presents an edited volume of Zinn''s diary, made available from his papers at NYU''s Tamiment Library ... Zinn''s diary entries focus on issues of race, class, democracy, and freedom that were of concern to him throughout his Atlanta years (1956-63)"--

Perhaps no other historian has had a more profound and revolutionary impact on American education than Howard Zinn. This is the first book devoted to his views on education and its role in a democratic society. Howard Zinn on Democratic Education describes what is missing from school textbooks and in classrooms-and how we move beyond these deficiencies to improve student education. Critical skills of citizenship are insufficiently developed in schools, according to Zinn. Textbooks and curricula must be changed to transcend the recitation of received wisdom too common today in schools. In these respects, recent Bush Administration and educational policies of most previous US presidents have been on the wrong track in meeting educational needs. This book seeks to redefine national goals at a time when public debates over education have never been more polarised--nor higher in public visibility and contentious debate. Zinn''s essays on education-many never before published--are framed in this book by a dialogue between Zinn and Donaldo Macedo, a distinguished critic of literacy and schooling, whose books with Paulo Freire, Noam Chomsky and other authors have received international acclaim.

Why Howard Zinn has become one of the most important and influential American historians is perhaps nowhere more evident than in this new book. Few social critics have been as inspiring as the ever-hopeful Zinn and, unlike many historians, Zinn turns historical details toward deeper observations on the universal truths and struggles of humankind. His remarkable wisdom and insight can be found in his earliest writings through his latest essays, speeches, and plays. Uncommon Sense brings together his most poignant and profound quotations from decades of writing and speaking. The book reveals the philosophical side of Howard Zinn and a consistency of vision over 50 years on topics ranging from government to race, history, law, civil disobedience, and activism. Offering quotations of universal and timeless quality, the book shows why history will regard this historian as a political and moral philosopher in the company of Paine, Jefferson, Frederick Douglass, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Howard Zinn''s history tells the story of the United States from the point of view of women, Native Americans, workers, blacks and Latinos. It serves to remind generations of Americans that democracy is fundamentally a conversation between people, one that has always been led by working people and those with the least to lose.

Selected testimonies to living history—speeches, letters, poems, songs—offered by the people who make history happen, but are often left out of history books: women, workers, nonwhites. Featuring introductions to the original texts by Howard Zinn. New voices featured in this 10th Anniversary Edition include Chelsea Manning, speaking after her 35-year prison sentence); Naomi Klein, speaking from the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Liberty Square; a member of Dream Defenders, a youth organization that confronts systemic racial inequality; members of the Undocumented Youth movement, who occupied, marched, and demonstrated in support of the DREAM Act; a member of the Day Laborers movement; Chicago Teachers Union strikers; and several critics of the Obama administration, including Glenn Greenwald, on governmental secrecy.

Ce n''est pas seulement qu''un président soit un politicien. Le pire est qu''il soit entouré de politiciens. Et nous, nous sommes des citoyens. Nous ne devons donc pas voir le monde à travers leurs yeux, en disant : "Bon, il faut faire des compromis, il faut faire ce choix pour des raisons politiques." C''est la situation dans laquelle se trouvaient les abolitionnistes avant la guerre de Sécession, quand on leur disait : "Ecoutez, il faut voir ça du point de vue de Lincoln." Or Lincoln ne pensait pas que la première des priorités était d''abolir l''esclavage. Pourtant, le mouvement anti-esclavagiste en était convaincu. Alors les abolitionnistes dirent : "Nous allons exprimer notre propre position, et nous le ferons avec une telle force que Lincoln sera obligé de nous écouter." Telle est notre histoire. Chaque fois qu''un progrès a eu lieu, c''est parce que les gens se sont comportés comme des citoyens, et non comme des politiciens. Ils ne se sont pas contentés de râler. Ils ont travaillé, ils ont agi, ils se sont organisés et se sont révoltés si nécessaire.

A “well-chosen anthology of the radical historian’s prodigious output,” from A People’s History of the United States and lesser known sources (Kirkus Reviews). When Howard Zinn died in early 2010, millions of Americans mourned the loss of one of the nation’s foremost intellectual and political guides; a historian, activist, and truth-teller who, in the words of the New York Times’s Bob Herbert, “peel[ed] back the rosy veneer of much of American history to reveal sordid realities that had remained hidden for too long.” A collection designed to highlight Zinn’s essential writings, The Indispensable Zinn includes excerpts from Zinn’s bestselling A People’s History of the United States; his memoir, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train; his inspiring writings on the civil rights movement, and the full text of his celebrated play, Marx in Soho. Noted historian and activist Timothy Patrick McCarthy provides essential historical and biographical context for each selection. With a foreword by Noam Chomsky and an afterword from Zinn’s former Spellman College student and longtime friend, Alice Walker, The Indispensable Zinn is both a fitting tribute to the legacy of a man whose “work changed the way millions of people saw the past,” and a powerful and accessible introduction for anyone coming to Zinn’s essential body of work for the first time (Noam Chomsky).

A wide-ranging collection of speeches—many published here for the first time—by the historian and author of A People’s History of the United States. Howard Zinn has illuminated our history like no other US historian. This collection of his speeches on protest movements, racism, war, and American history covers more than four decades of his active engagement with the audiences he inspired with his humor, insight, and clarity. This volume features Zinn’s impassioned and erudite statements on the war in Vietnam, abolishing the death penalty, the legacy of Emma Goldman, the myth of American exceptionalism, the Obama Administration, and much more. “Reading Howard’s spoken words, I feel that I am almost hearing his voice again—his stunning pitch-perfect ability to capture the moment and the concerns and needs of the audience, whoever they may be, always enlightening, often stirring, an amalgam of insight, critical history, wit, blended with charm and appeal.” —Noam Chomsky, leading public intellectual and author of Hopes and Prospects “With ferocious moral clarity and mischievous humor, Howard turned routine antiwar rallies into profound explorations of state violence and staid academic conferences into revival meetings for social change.” —Naomi Klein, author of No Is Not Enough and The Battle For Paradise

Howard Zinn tells the story of one of the most important political groups in American history. SNCC: The New Abolitionists influenced a generation of activists struggling for civil rights and seeking to learn from the successes and failures of those who built the fantastically influential Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. It is considered an indispensable study of the organization, of the 1960s, and of the process of social change. Includes a new introduction by the author.

Zinn''s compelling case against the Vietnam War, now with a new introduction. Of the many books that challenged the Vietnam War, Howard Zinn''s stands out as one of the best--and most influential. It helped sparked national debate on the war. It includes a powerful speech written by Zinn that President Johnson should have given to lay out the case for ending the war.

A play in two acts about Emma Goldman, American Anarchist. In this play, historian and playwright Howard Zinn dramatizes the life of Emma Goldman, the anarchist, feminist, and free-spirited thinker who was exiled from the United States because of her outspoken views, including her opposition to WWI. With his wit and ability to illuminate history from below, Zinn reveals the life of this remarkable woman.

Howard Zinn''s views on social movements, freedom, history, democracy and our own human potential are educational and transformative. In few places is his voice more clear and accessible than in the dozens of articles he penned for The Progressive magazine from 1980 to 2009, offered together here in book form for the first time. Whether encouraging people to organize, critiquing the government or speaking on behalf of working people who struggle to survive in an economy rigged to benefit the rich and powerful, Zinn''s historical clarity, unflappable optimism and unshakable questions reverberate throughout The Historic Unfulfilled Promise: "Have our political leaders gone mad?" "What kind of country do we want to live in?" "Has the will of the people been followed?" The Historic Unfulfilled Promise is a genuine work of conscience, rich in ideas, charged with energy; an invaluable introduction for the uninitiated and a must-have for Zinn''s fans. "Passionate, iconoclastic, and wrly humorous . . . [Zinn] sometimes proves astounding in his almost clairvoyant analysis."—Publisher''s Weekly Starred Review "A sharp and insightful collection from one of the country''s most visible historians and critics."—Booklist "A useful introduction to one of America''s great scholar-activists."—Kirkus Reviews "Howard Zinn''s life and work are an unforgettable model, sure to leave a permanent stamp on how history is understood and how a decent and honorable life should be lived."—Noam Chomsky "Proudly, unabashedly radical . . . Mr. Zinn delighted in debating ideological foes, not the least his own college president, and in lancing what he considered platitudes, not the least that American history was a heroic march toward democracy."—New York Times "For Howard, democracy was one big public fight and everyone should plunge into it. That''s the only way, he said, for everyday folks to get justic—by fighting for it."—Bill Moyers

En ésta, su más famosa obra, Howard Zinn nos presenta una perspectiva lúcida e imprescindible de la historia de los Estados Unidos. Desde el primer encuentro entre los indígenas americanos y Cristóbal Colón, hasta las aposionadas protestas en contra de la invasión de Irak del 2003, Zinn nos enfrenta con el otro lado de la historia de los Estados Unidos. Lleno de humor, calidez y respeto por aquellos que se han dejado fuera de la historia prevaleciente, La otra historia de los Estados Unidos de muestra la importancia de las experiencias de afroamericanos, mujeres, indígenas, obreros e inmigrantes en la formación del país. La nueva edición de la La otra historia incluye un análisis de la presidencia Bush, escrito por el autor antes de su muerte, en el cual discute la controversia de la elección presidencial del 2000, las deciciones que se tomaron tras los ataques del 11 de septiembre del 2001, la reación del pueblo americano y la elecciones legislativas del 2006.

Howard Zinn began work on his first book for his friends at Seven Stories Press in 1996, a big volume collecting all his shorter writings organized by subject. The themes he chose reflected his lifelong concerns: war, history, law, class, means and ends, and race. Throughout his life Zinn had returned again and again to these subjects, continually probing and questioning yet rarely reversing his convictions or the vision that informed them. The result was The Zinn Reader. Five years later, starting with Howard Zinn on History, updated editions of sections of that mammoth tome were published in inexpensive stand-alone editions. This second edition of Howard Zinn on History brings together twenty-seven short writings on activism, electoral politics, the Holocaust, Marxism, the Iraq War, and the role of the historian, as well as portraits of Eugene Debs, John Reed, and Jack London, effectively showing how Zinn’s approach to history evolved over nearly half a century, and at the same time sharing his fundamental thinking that social movements—people getting together for peace and social justice—can change the course of history. That core belief never changed. Chosen by Zinn himself as the shorter writings on history he believed to have enduring value—originally appearing in newspapers like the Boston Globe or the New York Times; in magazines like Z, the New Left, the Progressive, or the Nation; or in his book Failure to Quit—these essays appear here as examples of the kind of passionate engagement he believed all historians, and indeed all citizens of whatever profession, need to have, standing in sharp contrast to the notion of "objective" or "neutral" history espoused by some. "It is time that we scholars begin to earn our keep in this world," he writes in "The Uses of Scholarship." And in "Freedom Schools," about his experiences teaching in Mississippi during the remarkable "Freedom Summer" of 1964, he adds: "Education can, and should, be dangerous."

Howard Zinn on Race is Zinn’s choice of the shorter writings and speeches that best reflect his views on America’s most taboo topic. As chairman of the history department at all black women’s Spelman College, Zinn was an outspoken supporter of student activists in the nascent civil rights movement. In "The Southern Mystique," he tells of how he was asked to leave Spelman in 1963 after teaching there for seven years. "Behind every one of the national government’s moves toward racial equality," writes Zinn in one 1965 essay, "lies the sweat and effort of boycotts, picketing, beatings, sit-ins, and mass demonstrations." He firmly believed that bringing people of different races and nationalities together would create a more compassionate world, where equality is a given and not merely a dream. These writings, which span decades, express Zinn’s steadfast belief that the people have the power to change the status quo, if they only work together and embrace the nearly forgotten American tradition of civil disobedience and revolution. In clear, compassionate, and present prose, Zinn gives us his thoughts on the Abolitionists, the march from Selma to Montgomery, John F. Kennedy, picketing, sit-ins, and, finally, the message he wanted to send to New York University students about race in a speech he delivered during the last week of his life.

Truth—as Zinn shows us in the interviews that make up Terrorism and War—has indeed been the first casualty of war, starting from the beginnings of American empire in the Spanish-American War. But war has many other casualties, he argues, including civil liberties on the home front and human rights abroad. In Terrorism and War, Zinn explores the growth of the American empire, as well as the long tradition of resistance in this country to U.S. militarism, from Eugene Debs and the Socialist Party during World War One to the opponents of U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan today.

Here, in the magisterial yet plain-spoken style of A People''s History of the United States, is historian Howard Zinn''s long-awaited telling of these last six years of United States history, a time when catastrophic machinations of war have dictated our foreign and domestic policy, and when voices of resistance have appeared in the unlikeliest places. Perhaps more than any other American, Howard Zinn has helped us understand ourselves by deepening our understanding of our own history.

"Political power," says Howard Zinn, "is controlled by the corporate elite, and the arts are the locale for a kind of guerilla warfare in the sense that guerillas look for apertures and opportunities where they can have an effect." In Artists in Times of War, Zinn looks at the possibilities to create such apertures through art, film, activism, publishing and through our everyday lives. In this collection of four essays, the author of A People''s History of the United States writes about why "To criticize the government is the highest act of patriotism." Filled with quotes and examples from the likes of Bob Dylan, Mark Twain, e. e. cummings, Thomas Paine, Joseph Heller, and Emma Goldman, Zinn''s essays discuss America''s rich cultural counternarratives to war, so needed in these days of unchallenged U.S. militarism.

D''Hiroshima à l''Irak, en passant par la guerre du Vietnam, les bombardements aériens sont au cour de la stratégie militaire américaine. Des analystes ont réfuté l''utilité stratégique de cette pratique, en montrant qu''elle relève davantage de la "passion technologique" que de la "raison militaire". Selon Howard Zinn, cette critique est recevable, mais trop courte. Il faut, soutient-il dans cet essai, condamner les bombardements intensifs en raison des atrocités qu''ils infligent à des centaines de milliers d''êtres humains, pour la plupart des civils. Quiconque saisit l''horreur des tapis de bombes, des bombes incendiaires et de la bombe atomique comprendra que rien ne les justifie pas même une "guerre juste". Howard Zinn parle d''expérience. Pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, il a participé de plein gré à des bombardements, dont celui de la ville de Royan, en France. Il accueillit avec joie le bombardement atomique d''Hiroshima parce qu''il mettait fin à la guerre. Dans La bombe, il raconte comment la prise de conscience des conséquences de ces événements a fait de lui un farouche opposant à la politique militaire américaine.

We live in a world of poverty, war, and environmental devastation. A world where living standards for working people plummet while an elite few enjoy lives of unbelievable wealth and power. Something differentan alternative to capitalismis desperately needed. But what should replace it? This book proposes socialism. A society built from the bottom up through the struggles of ordinary people against exploitation, oppression, and injusticeone in which people come before profit. A society based on the principles of equality, democracy, and freedom. ""This is a vivid, fluent, and rare book about socialism for those uninterested in tracts and excited by new prospects"" John Pilger, author of Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire ""Is socialism an impossible, discredited dream or the only realistic path for human survival? If you''re not sure of the answer, or are just curious about what the left really believes in, you need to read Maass. He''s the Tom Paine of the contemporary American left.