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

Howard Zinn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807070599 ISBN 13: 9780807070598

Publisher: Beacon Press, 1995

Synopsis

The bestselling author of A People's History of the United States now provides readers with "a powerful, politically electric book" (Jonathan Kozol)--"a warmhearted memoir of a teacher who committed his politically engaged life to the belief that love is a command to action" (Colman McCarthy, The Washington Post).

About this title

Review

By any standards, Howard Zinn has led a remarkable life as teacher, writer, and social activist, a life in which those three categories are viewed not as compartmentalized tasks but as part of a unified identity. You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, a title taken from his advice to students about his take on American history and current events, is a powerful testament to that life.

It begins with his 1956 acceptance of a teaching post at Atlanta's Spelman College, a school for black women that would soon be caught up in the civil rights movement. Zinn, who had already been radicalized on the streets of Brooklyn as a teenager, got caught up along with his students (who included the future head of the Children's Defense Fund, Marian Wright Edelman, and author Alice Walker), and was kicked out in 1963 for "insubordination." He moved to Boston University, where he became an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War, and would prove a constant thorn in the side of university president John Silber throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

Zinn writes in plain language that brooks no nonsense when it speaks of moral urgency, but he isn't above a sense of humor. Noting that the FBI was watching him constantly during the war era, he wryly observes that, "I have grown to depend on them for accurate reports on my speeches." Individual scenes leap out at the reader: Zinn's horror when he realized, years after WWII, that he had dropped napalm bombs on German troops; a meeting in a college classroom with the sister and parents of one of the victims of the Kent State massacre; Selma, Alabama, police beating blacks attempting to register to vote while federal agents stand by and do nothing. Through it all, Zinn writes, "I see this as the central issue of our time: how to find a substitute for war in human ingenuity, imagination, courage, sacrifice, patience." --Ron Hogan

About the Author

Howard Zinn is a teacher, historian, and social activist, and the author of many books, including the best-selling A People's History of the United States and You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train (Beacon / 7127-7 / $13.00 pb). He lives near Boston. Dana Frank, professor of American studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is author of the awardwinning Buy American (Beacon / 4711-2 / $17.50 pb). Robin D. G. Kelley, professor of history at New York University, is author of Race Rebels, Yo' Mama's Disfunktional! (Beacon / 0941-5 / $14.00 pb), and Freedom Dreams (Beacon / 0976-8 / $24.00 cl).

Edition details

• Publisher: Beacon Press
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0807070599
• ISBN 13: 9780807070598
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224