You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times - Hardcover

Zinn, Howard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807070580 ISBN 13: 9780807070581

Publisher: Beacon Pr, 1994

Synopsis

The author of A People's History of the United States recounts his youth in the Brooklyn slums, participation as a bombardier in World War II, years as a college teacher, and role in the civil rights movement.

About this title

About the Author

Howard Zinn is professor of political science emeritus at Boston University.

Reviews

Noted left-wing historian Zinn ( A People's History of the United States ) believes that activism and education are inextricable, and his memoir illuminates a well-engaged life. Teaching at Atlanta's Spelman College in the early days of the civil rights movement, he found allies in principled students like Marian Wright (now Edelman) and budding writer Alice Walker. He advised SNCC in Selma, Ala. He volunteered to fight the Nazis but, after Hiroshima, developed a skeptical pacifism he further exercised as a passionate opponent of the Vietnam War. Zinn's narrative is oddly disjointed: not until late in the book does he recount his youth in the slums of Brooklyn, his discovery of Dickens, Marx and Steinbeck and his post-WW II years as a laborer and a 27-year-old college freshman. If Zinn is a bit Pollyannish, he's also inspirational, arguing that, because much has changed in history, "We can be surprised again. Indeed, we can do the surprising."
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The eminent radical historian (Boston Univ.; Declarations of Independence, 1990, etc.) recalls his struggles against American racism and war, and he expresses his hope for the future, in this memoir and manifesto. The son of poor Jewish immigrants to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Zinn worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and served as a bombardier in Europe in WW II. He attended Columbia University, received a doctorate in history in 1956, and became head of the history department at Spelman College, an African-American women's school in Atlanta. Zinn's experiences at Spelman radicalized him. A third of this text is devoted to reminiscences about the civil rights struggle in the South. His account is one of ordinary individuals taking small steps to battle racial injustice-- integrating the Atlanta library system, sitting in with African- American students at lunch counters as a challenge to Jim Crow statutes, organizing Freedom Rides in Albany, Ga., and voter registration in Selma, Ala., in defiance of racist local governments and often pusillanimous federal authorities. Fired from the traditional Spelman for being too controversial, Zinn came to Boston University, where he opposed the Vietnam War. He describes his outspoken opposition to the war and his trip to Hanoi to repatriate liberated American prisoners. Finally, in a scattershot group of essays, he discusses his civil disobedience, his conflicts with the conservative Boston University administration, and his hope for a more decent society, brought about by ordinary people. Zinn's radical activism will not appeal to every reader, but he does argue persuasively--and relevantly, even for those who do not embrace his critique of America and its institutions--that ``small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.'' -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The hundreds of thousands who enjoyed Zinn's People's History of the United States--a book that ignores presidents, generals, and vanguards--in college will find him as engaging, open-minded, informative, politically committed, and attentive to the exigencies of writing as ever. He still refuses to preach to the choir; he still takes seriously readers who wonder out loud, "If this country is such a terrible place, why don't you leave it?" But his uncharacteristic admiration of elites here startles. After all, he knew Julian Bond, Stokely Carmichael, John Lewis, Etta Baker, Dick Gregory, Jim Foreman, James Baldwin--he knew them all. The 18-year-olds he taught at Spellman all went on to become prominent civil rights lawyers or found the Children's Defense Fund or mother the mayor of Atlanta. They're successful. He's successful. Yet oppression in America is as brutal as ever, he assures us, when he is not recounting his part in the Good Fight that ameliorated it markedly. Aw hell, he's lived a good life. Who can blame him for a little inconsistency? Roland Wulbert

Edition details

• Publisher: Beacon Pr
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0807070580
• ISBN 13: 9780807070581
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 214