Howard Zinn | |
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Howard Zinn
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Born |
Brooklyn, New York City, New York, U.S. |
August 24, 1922
Died |
January 27, 2010 (aged 87) Santa Monica, California, U.S. |
Occupation | Historian |
Alma mater |
New York University (B.A.) Columbia University (M.A.; Ph.D.) |
Spouse | Roslyn (Shechter) Zinn (died 2008) |
Howard Zinn (August 24, 1922 – January 27, 2010) was an American historian, playwright, and social activist. He was a political science professor at Boston University. Zinn wrote more than twenty books, including his best-selling and influential A People's History of the United States. In 2007, he published a version of it for younger readers, A Young People′s History of the United States.
Zinn described himself as "something of an anarchist, something of a socialist. Maybe a democratic socialist." He wrote extensively about the civil rights and anti-war movements, and labor history of the United States. His memoir, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, was also the title of a 2004 documentary about Zinn's life and work. Zinn died of a heart attack in 2010, aged 87.
Zinn was born to a Jewish immigrant family in Brooklyn on August 24, 1922. His father, Eddie Zinn, born in Austria-Hungary, immigrated to the U.S. with his brother Samuel before the outbreak of World War I. Howard's mother, Jenny (Rabinowitz) Zinn, emigrated from the Eastern Siberian city of Irkutsk. His parents first became acquainted as workers at the same factory. His father worked as a ditch digger and window cleaner during the Great Depression. His father and mother ran a neighborhood candy store for a brief time, barely getting by. For many years his father was in the waiters' union and worked as a waiter for weddings and bar mitzvahs.