Howard Zinn

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Howard Zinn (born December 7, 1922 in Brooklyn, New York) is an influential leftist historian. Zinn is retired from a professorship at Boston University. He has received the Thomas Merton Award, the Eugene V. Debs Award, the Upton Sinclair Award, and the Lannan Literary Award. He lives in Auburndale, Massachusetts, U.S.

Zinn was raised in a working-class family in Brooklyn, and flew bombing missions for the United States in World War II, an experience he now points to in shaping his opposition to war. In 1956, he became a professor at Spelman College in Atlanta, a school for black women, where he soon became involved in the Civil rights movement. Zinn collaborated there with historian Staughton Lynd and mentored a young student named Alice Walker. When he was fired in 1963 for insubordination related to his protest work, he moved to Boston University, where he became a leading critic of the Vietnam War. He is perhaps best known for A People's History of the United States, which presents American history through the eyes of those he feels are outside of the political and economic establishment: Native Americans, slaves, women, blacks, Populists, etc. His autobiography is You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train.

A reference to A People's History was made in the movie Good Will Hunting; Matt Damon grew up next door to Zinn. Another pop culture reference to the book, which has become an bestseller, was in a Columbus Day episode of the TV show The Sopranos. Zinn, together with Noam Chomsky is one of the most respected icons of the libertarian left in the U.S.

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