Web Resources

Howard Zinn

The official Howard Zinn website. Includes a list of speaking dates, in addition to just about anything else you'll be wanting.

"Our government has declared a military victory in Iraq. As a patriot, I will not celebrate. I will mourn the dead -- the American GIs, and also the Iraqi dead, of which there have been many, many more.

I will mourn the Iraqi children, not just those who are dead, but those who have been be blinded, crippled, disfigured, or traumatized, like the bombed children of Afghanistan who, as reported by American visitors, lost their power of speech. The American media has not given us a full picture of the human suffering caused by our bombing; for that, we need to read the foreign press." -- Howard Zinn

 

Wikipedia :: Howard Zinn

The Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia is an exquisite result of the internet. This is a brief Wikipedia page, getting to the essentials of Howard Zinn, but without any depth.

e is perhaps best known for A People's History of the United States, which presents American history through the eyes of those 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.

-- Wikipedia

Howard Zinn's ZNet HomePage

ZNet and Z Magazine are excellent online resources for alternative news and thought. This page links to numerous articles and commentaries by Professor Zinn.

"Howard Zinn is a historian and a playwright. He taught at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, then at Boston University. He was active in the civil rights movement, and in the movement against the Vietnam war. He has written many books, his best known being A People's History of the United States. His most recent books include You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train (a memori), The Zinn Reader, The Future of History (interviews with David Barsamian) and Marx in Soho (a play)." -- ZNet

 

Zinn articles for The Progressive

Zinn is a columnist for this venerable publication.

On January 9, 1909, Wisconsin Senator Robert La Follette founded La Follette’s Weekly to be "a magazine of progress, social, intellectual, institutional."

In 1929, La Follette’s Weekly changed its name to The Progressive, and the views of the magazine have remained remarkably consistent over the years.

For nine decades, The Progressive has been a courageous voice for democracy, peace, social justice, civil rights, civil liberties, and environmental awareness." -- Noam Chomsky

 

Excerpt from Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States

Chapter 16 from Zinn's most well-known work of History.

"The victors [of World War II] were the Soviet Union and the United States (also England, France and Nationalist China, but they were weak). Both these countries now went to work--without swastikas, goose-stepping, or officially declared racism, but under the cover of "socialism" on one side, and "democracy" on the other, to carve out their own empires of influence. They proceeded to share and contest with one another the domination of the world, to build military machines far greater than the Fascist countries had built, to control the destinies of more countries than Hitler, Mussolini, and Japan had been able to do. They also acted to control their own populations, each country with its own techniques-crude in the Soviet Union, sophisticated in the United States--to make their rule secure." -- Howard Zinn

 

War, by Howard Zinn

On the eve of war, Zinn foresees the wavering and weak support for war floundering in the wake of 'collateral damage'.

And though the media will be blocked from access to the dead and wounded of Iraq, though the human tragedy unfolding in Iraq will be told in numbers, in abstractions, and not in the stories of real human beings, real children, real mothers and fathers - the movement will find a way to tell that story. And when it does, the American people, who can be cold to death on "the other side", but who also wake up when "the other side" is suddenly seen as a man, a woman, a child - just like us - will respond. -- Howard Zinn

Mother Jones articles by or about Zinn

Mother Jones: a legacy of raising hell, a commitment to JOURNALISM.

"Where people are suffering, there is a moral imperative to act. But how one acts is crucial, because there are interventions that make things worse." -- Howard Zinn

Marx in Soho

This site features some exposition of the this stage play by Howard Zinn. Apparently maintained by (or for) an American actor, Brian Jones, who has been touring this one-man show across the US since 1999. The reviews look good! The site also includes a schedule of performances, a brief Zinn bio, some links, and information on having the play performed in a theatre near you.

" Marx is back! The premise of this witty and insightful "play on history" is that Karl Marx has agitated with the authorities of the afterlife for a chance to clear his name. Through a bureaucratic error, though, Marx is sent to Soho in New York, rather than his old stomping ground in London, to make his case.

Marx in Soho is a brilliant introduction to Marx's life, his analysis of society, and his passion for radical change. Zinn also shows how relevant Marx's ideas are for today's world." -- Play description

howardzinn.org

A very fine site, with well integrated content and functionality. A large archive of excerpts from Zinn's texts; message forum, bibliography, biography, lots of interactivity. A nice little Zinn community.

"War is the health of the state," the radical writer Randolph Bourne said, in the midst of the First World War. Indeed, as the nations of Europe went to war in 1914, the governments flourished, patriotism bloomed, class struggle was stilled, and young men died in frightful numbers on the battlefields-often for a hundred yards of land, a line of trenches. -- Howard Zinn, from A People's History: The Empire and the People

FBI ~ Federal Bureau of Intimidation

An article by Zinn concerning the qualities of a democracy in which organisations like the FBI and CIA operate as they do.

" At that point, the FBI also inquired who the author of that report was, and asked that an investigation begin on the author. Since I had written it, I was interested in the FBI's interest in the author. In fact, I sent away for whatever information the FBI had on me, through the Freedom of Information Act. I became curious, I guess. I wanted to test myself because if I found that the FBI did not have any dossier on me, it would have been tremendously embarrassing and I wouldn't have been able to face my friends." -- Howard Zinn

Third World Traveler: Howard Zinn Page

The Third World Traveler site is a great general resource for progressive thinking. Abundant content is hosted on the site along with an exemplary set of links to offsite resources. In addition, the Howard Zinn page includes numerous quotes from Zinn's books, articles, interviews and talks, including

There is a kind of belief that if you elected the government, then everything is democratic and you can trust the government.

~ Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn's History Lessons

Michael Kazin's critical review of Zinn's A People's History of the United States in Dissent magazine. An important criticism coming from the political left.

Zinn reduces the past to a Manichean fable and makes no serious attempt to address the biggest question a leftist can ask about U.S. history: why have most Americans accepted the legitimacy of the capitalist republic in which they live?

~ Michael Kazin