Ezra's Bookshelf

You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train

by Howard Zinn · 269 pages · ~5 hrs

Biography & MemoirPolitics & Government

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Howard Zinn, the historian whose People's History of the United States transformed how Americans understand their past, tells his own story of growing up in Brooklyn tenements, working in a Navy shipyard, fighting as a bombardier in World War II, and becoming a leading voice for civil rights and against war. Zinn writes with characteristic clarity about the experiences that shaped his political convictions: watching his father struggle as a waiter, discovering socialism through the works he found in his neighborhood, questioning the morality of the bombing campaigns he participated in. The memoir traces his years teaching at Spelman College in Atlanta, where he became involved in the civil rights movement and was fired for supporting student activists, and his subsequent career at Boston University, where he opposed the Vietnam War and supported student movements. Throughout, Zinn reflects on the relationship between scholarship and activism, arguing that the pretense of objectivity serves existing power structures. He writes about his friendships with figures like Ella Baker and Daniel Berrigan, his experiences at demonstrations from Selma to the Pentagon, and his conviction that ordinary people's actions can change history. This book offers both an engaging life story and a defense of engaged citizenship, written by someone who never separated his historical work from his commitment to justice.

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