Summary
No other radical historian has reached so many hearts and minds as Howard Zinn. His A People's History of the United States has gone into more than 25 printings and sold over 400,000 copies. It is rare that a historian of the Left has managed to retain as much credibility while refusing to let his a... Full description
- I. Race. The Southern mystique ; A quiet case of social change ; Finishing school for pickers ; Out of the sit-ins ; Kennedy : the reluctant emancipator ; Alabama : freedom day in Selma ; Mississippi : Hattiesburg ; The Selma to Montgomery march ; Abolitionists, freedom riders and the tactics of agitation ; When will the long feud end?
- II. Class. Growing up class-conscious ; LaGuardia in the Jazz Age ; The Wobbly spirit ; The Ludlow Massacre ; The limits of the New Deal ; Who owns the sun? ; The secret word
- III. War. Just and unjust war ; The bombing of Royan ; Vietnam: a matter of perspective ; Of fish and fishermen ; A speech for LBJ ; Dow shalt not kill ; Aggressive liberalism ; The curious chronology of the Mayaguez incident ; The CIA, Rockefeller, and the boys in the club ; Whom will we honor Memorial Day? ; What did Richard Nixon learn? ; Machiavellian realism and U.S. foreign policy : means and ends ; Terrorism over Tripoli
- IV. Law. Law and justice ; The problem is civil obedience ; The Bill of Rights ; Testifying at the Ellsberg trial ; Amazing grace: the movement wins in Camden ; Punishment ; Attica ; The biggest secret ; Where to look for a communist ; Plato : fallen idol ; Upton Sinclair and Sacco & Vanzetti
- V. History. Columbus and Western civilization ; The uses of scholarship ; Historian as citizen ; Secrecy, archives, and the public interest ; Freedom schools ; The new history ; "A university should not be a democracy" ; The Marines and the university ; How free is higher education? ; "Je ne suis pas marxiste" ; Jack London's The iron heel ; Discovering John Reed
- VI. Means and ends. Violence and human nature ; Non-violent direct action ; The new radicalism ; The spirit of rebellion ; Beyond voting ; The optimism of uncertainty ; Anarchism ; Failure to quit.