“Zinn writes with an enthusiasm rarely encountered in the leaden prose of academic history. . .” – New York Times Book Review A Power Governments Cannot Suppress is Howard Zinn’s major new collection of essays on American history, class, immigration, justice, and ordinary citizens who have made a difference. Howard Zinn unlocks America’s current political/ ethical crisis and challenges us to confront power for the common good. Bringing a profoundly human perspective to the diverse subjects he writes about – the Founding Fathers, government dishonesty, winning the war on terrorism, respecting the holocaust, defending the rights of immigrants – Zinn approaches history from an active, engaged point of view. He writes, “America’s future is linked to how we understand our past. For this reason, writing about history, for me, is never a neutral act.” Zinn opens the book with an essay titled “If History is to be Creative,” a reflection on the role and responsibility of the engaged historian. “To think that history-writing must aim simply to recapitulate the failures that dominate the past,” writes Zinn, “is to make historians collaborators in an endless cycle of defeat.” “If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should, I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, and occasionally win. I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past’s fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare.” Buzzing with ideas, stories, and anecdotes spanning from the Revolutionary War and the War with Mexico through to World War II, Vietnam, 9/11, and the U.S. occupation of Iraq, Zinn’s view of American history is not a praise of famous leaders, but those who rebelled against them in the name of social justice. While writing extensively on current events and the consequences of U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Iraq, Zinn also dedicates entire chapters to troublemakers like Henry David Thoreau, Eugene Debs, Philip Berrigan, Italian immigrants Sacco & Vanzetti, and heralds not the soldiers who fought for George Washington, but those who deserted the Revolutionary Army because of intolerable mistreatment from elitist commanding officers. For Zinn, the voices and stories of ordinary working Americans, immigrants, working people, and soldiers comprise the real storyline of our history. Featuring essays penned over an eight-year period, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress is Howard Zinn’s first writerly work in several years, an invaluable post-9/11-era addition to the themes that run through his bestselling classic, A People’s History Of the United States. "Thank you, Howard Zinn. Thank you for telling us what none of our leaders are willing to: The truth. And you tell it with such brilliance, such humanity. It is a personal honor to be able to say I am a better citizen because of you." —Michael Moore “This brilliant new book – like Howard Zinn’s presence, and his whole life, is the best possible antidote to political despair. Read it, and rejoin the struggle for a human world and a foreign policy that’s good for children.” – Daniel Ellsberg

"From the bestselling author of A People's History of the United States comes this selection of passionate, honest, and piercing essays looking at American political ideology." " Howard Zinn brings to Passionate Declarations the same astringent style and provocative point of view that led more than a million people to buy his book A People's History of the United States. He directs his critique here to what he calls "American orthodoxies" -- that set of beliefs guardians of our culture consider sacrosanct: justifications for war, cynicism about human nature and violence, pride in our economic system, certainty of our freedom of speech, romanticization of representative government, confidence in our system of justice. Those orthodoxies, he believes, have a chilling effect on our capacity to think independently and to become active citizens in the long struggle for peace and justice." -- Book Jacket.

"Truth Has a Power of Its Own is an engrossing collection of never-before-published conversations with Howard Zinn, conducted by the distinguished broadcast journalist Ray Suarez in 2007, that covers the course of American history from Columbus to the War on Terror from the perspective of ordinary people--including slaves, workers, immigrants, women, and Native Americans. Viewed through the lens of Zinn's own life as a soldier, historian, and activist and using his paradigm-shifting 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."--Amazon.com.

This paperback bestseller presents a series of case studies and thought-provoking essays arguing for a radical approach to history and providing a revisionist interpretation of the historian's role. In a new introduction written for this edition, Howard Zinn responds to critics of the 1970 edition and comments further on the radicalization of history.

"Historian, activist, and bestselling author Howard Zinn has been interviewed by David Barsamian for public radio numerous times over the past decade. Original Zinn is a collection of their conversations, showcasing the acclaimed author at his most engaging and provocative." "Touching on such diverse topics as the American war machine, civil disobedience, the importance of memory and remembering history, and the role of artists - from Langston Hughes to Dalton Trumbo to Bob Dylan - in relation to social change, Original Zinn is Zinn at his irrepressible best, the acute perception of a scholar whose knowledge and intellect make history immediate and relevant for us all."--

Howard Zinn on History brings together Zinn's shorter 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."

Interviews focusing on the last century take a look at history from the standpoint of the ordinary people of the country.

Howard Zinn weaves rich historical narratives that inspire and captivate.