Zinn, Howard.

Collection of important publications / working-copies from the private library of Howard Zinn; books he privately used for his research and books that helped him in his studies of Anti-War efforts, his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement as well as his general studies of American Political History, his Political Activism and Political Criticism, his research of the United States Government and its national and international policies etc. The collection includes paperbacks and several Hardcover-publications as well. All the books are bearing Howard Zinn’s large ownership-signature to the endpaper, many have markings or/and annotations by Howard Zinn. The Collection includes: 1. Thomas D. Boettcher – Vietnam – The Valor and the Sorrow – From the home front to the front lines in words and pictures. Boston, 1985 / 2. Theodore L. Becker – Political Trials – New York, 1971 [with interesting text-markings and annotations by Howard Zinn in the chapter “The Spiegel Affair”, highlighting the name of Augstein in the “Fallex 62” Exercise – Affair, involving NATO in which “Der Speigel” reported on the mock war and Germany’s involvement through its then Defense Minister: Franz Josef Strauss” (″as defense minister, Strauss dedicated himself to equipping the German army with tactical nuclear weapons and to redefining Germany’s role in NATO” – page 9)] / 3. Michi Weglyn – “Years of Infamy” – The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps – New York, William Morrow and Company, 1976 [with repeated highlightings by Howard Zinn regarding “Tule Lake” and for example on page 239 that the “renunciation law would be restricted to those over seventeen years of age”] – Zinn explores here the American practice of detaining 110000 Japanese citizens in concentration camps, Zinn’s outrage is explained in several heavy textmarkings / 4. Immanuel Wallerstein – “The Modern World-System” – “Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century” – [Studies in Social Discontinuity] New York, 1974 – [With several text-markings, and detailed annotations by Howard Zinn, for example on food & luxires in feudalism etc.] / 5. Phillip Knightley – “The First Casualty” – “From the Crimea to Vietnam: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist and Myth Maker” – New York, 1975 – [With some text-markings by Howard Zinn in the chapter on World War One] / 6. Charles Tilly, Louise Tilly and Richard Tilly – “The Rebellious Century (1830-1930” – Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press, 1980 – [With interesting markings, for example on Michael Lipsky making “a strong case that the strike movement owed what success it had (which was not enormous) to the fact that dramatic protests activated powerful third parties….” p. 294] / 7. Norman Moss – “Men who play God” – “The Story of the Hydrogen Bomb” – Baltimore, Penguin, 1971 / 8. Kenneth Bock – Human Nature and History – “A Response to Sociobiology” – New York, Columbia University Press, 1980 / 9. E.H.Dance – “History the Betrayer” – “A Study in Bias” – Westort (Connecticut), Greenwood Press, 1975 – [With a signed letter by Stephen van Evera to Howard Zinn, on “Tufts University” – Stationery, who sent him the book by EH Dance and who reflects on Zinn’s idea of “expanding the first part of your “Politics of History”, discussing more deeply the tendency of scholarship to hide in irrelevance, fail to evaluate and leave bitter disputes in the dark from fear of making enemies”] / 10. Edwin Fogelman – “Hiroshima – The Decision to use the A-Bomb” [Heavily marked by Howard Zinn in several chapters, reflecting on his detection of the american government’s policy of justifying the use of the Atomic Bomb, and highlighting especially Brigadier General Leslie Richard Groves’ information on the Manhattan Project: “As time went on, and as we poured more and more money and effort into the project, the government became increasingly committed to the ultimate use of the bomb….” / 11. Gloria Emerson – “Gaza” – “A Year in the Intifada – A Personal Account from an Occupied Land” New York, The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991 – Inscribed and signed by the author Gloria Emerson to Howard Zinn / 12. H.G. Wells – “The Outline of History” – “Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind” – Complete in One Volume with all maps, charts, illustrations, diagrams etc. – New York, Garden City Publishing, 1930. / 13. David Hunt – Organizing for Revolution in Vietnam – Study of a Mekong Delta Province [Howard Zinn’s personal working copy with several markings within the text] – April 1974 /

Cambridge / London / and others, South End Press / Cambrigde University Press / Oxford University Press / Mouton & Co. and many others, c. 1966 – 2002. Octavo. c. 4500 pages. Original Hardcover- and Softcover – Volumes. Very good condition with only minor signs of external wear. Amazing and valuable collection of publications from the personal working-library of one of America’s most important and influential social critics. All books with Howard Zinn’s ownership – signature.

In one of his last interviews, Howard Zinn stated that he would like to be remembered “for introducing a different way of thinking about the world, about war, about human rights, about equality,” and

“for getting more people to realize that the power which rests so far in the hands of people with wealth and guns, that the power ultimately rests in people themselves and that they can use it. At certain points in history, they have used it. Black people in the South used it. People in the women’s movement used it. People in the anti-war movement used it. People in other countries who have overthrown tyrannies have used it″

He said he wanted to be known as “somebody who gave people a feeling of hope and power that they didn’t have before.″

Howard Zinn (August 24, 1922 – January 27, 2010) was an American historian, playwright, philosopher, socialist thinker and World War II veteran. He was chair of the history and social sciences department at Spelman College, and a political science professor at Boston University. Zinn wrote over 20 books, including his best-selling and influential “A People’s History of the United States” in 1980. 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 movement, the anti-war movement and labor history of the United States. His memoir, “You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train” (Beacon Press, 2002), was also the title of a 2004 documentary about Zinn’s life and work. Zinn died of a heart attack in 2010, at age 87.

Zinn was professor of history at Spelman College in Atlanta from 1956 to 1963, and visiting professor at both the University of Paris and University of Bologna. At the end of the academic year in 1963, Zinn was fired from Spelman for insubordination. His dismissal came from Dr. Albert Manley, the first African-American president of that college, who felt Zinn was radicalizing Spelman students.

In 1964, he accepted a position at Boston University (BU), after writing two books and participating in the Civil Rights Movement in the South. His classes in civil liberties were among the most popular at the university with as many as 400 students subscribing each semester to the non-required class. A professor of political science, he taught at BU for 24 years and retired in 1988 at age 66.

″He had a deep sense of fairness and justice for the underdog. But he always kept his sense of humor. He was a happy warrior,” said Caryl Rivers, journalism professor at BU. Rivers and Zinn were among a group of faculty members who in 1979 defended the right of the school’s clerical workers to strike and were threatened with dismissal after refusing to cross a picket line.

Zinn came to believe that the point of view expressed in traditional history books was often limited. Biographer Martin Duberman noted that when he was asked directly if he was a Marxist, Zinn replied, “Yes, I’m something of a Marxist.” He especially was influenced by the liberating vision of the young Marx in overcoming alienation, and disliked what he perceived to be Marx’s later dogmatism. In later life he moved more toward anarchism.

He wrote a history text, A People’s History of the United States, to provide other perspectives on American history. The book depicts the struggles of Native Americans against European and U.S. conquest and expansion, slaves against slavery, unionists and other workers against capitalists, women against patriarchy, and African-Americans for civil rights. The book was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1981.

In the years since the first edition of A People’s History was published in 1980, it has been used as an alternative to standard textbooks in many college history courses, and it is one of the most widely known examples of critical pedagogy. The New York Times Book Review stated in 2006 that the book “routinely sells more than 100,000 copies a year.″

In 2004, Zinn published Voices of a People’s History of the United States with Anthony Arnove. Voices is a sourcebook of speeches, articles, essays, poetry and song lyrics by the people themselves whose stories are told in A People’s History.

In 2008, the Zinn Education Project was launched to support educators using A People’s History of the United States as a source for middle and high school history. The project was started when a former student of Zinn, who wanted to bring Zinn’s lessons to students around the country, provided the financial backing to allow two other organizations, Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change to coordinate the project. The project hosts a website with hundreds of free downloadable lesson plans to complement A People’s History of the United States.

The People Speak, released in 2010, is a documentary movie based on “A People’s History of the United States” and inspired by the lives of ordinary people who fought back against oppressive conditions over the course of the history of the United States. The film, narrated by Zinn, includes performances by Matt Damon, Morgan Freeman, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, Viggo Mortensen, Josh Brolin, Danny Glover, Marisa Tomei, Don Cheadle, and Sandra Oh.

From 1956 through 1963, Zinn chaired the Department of History and Social Sciences at Spelman College. He participated in the Civil Rights Movement and lobbied with historian August Meier “to end the practice of the Southern Historical Association of holding meetings at segregated hotels.″

While at Spelman, Zinn served as an adviser to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and wrote about sit-ins and other actions by SNCC for The Nation and Harper’s. In 1964, Beacon Press published his book SNCC: The New Abolitionists.

In 1964 Zinn, with the SNCC, began developing an educational program so that the 200 volunteer SNCC civil rights workers in the South, many of whom were college dropouts, could continue with their civil rights work and at the same time be involved in an educational system. Up until then many of the volunteers had been dropping out of school so they could continue their work with SNCC. Other volunteers had not spent much time in college. The program had been endorsed by the SNCC in December 1963 and was envisioned by Zinn as having a curriculum that ranged from novels to books about “major currents” in 20th-century world history, such as fascism, communism, and anti-colonial movements. This occurred while Zinn was in Boston.

Zinn also attended an assortment of SNCC meetings in 1964, traveling back and forth from Boston. One of those trips was to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in January 1964 to participate in a SNCC voter registration drive. The local newspaper, the Hattiesburg American, described the SNCC volunteers in town for the voter registration drive as “outside agitators” and told local blacks “to ignore whatever goes on, and interfere in no way…” At a mass meeting held during the visit to Hattiesburg, Zinn and another SNCC representative, Ella Baker, emphasized the risks that went along with their efforts, a subject probably in their minds since a well-known civil rights activist, Medgar Evers, had been murdered getting out of his car in the driveway of his home in Jackson, Mississippi, only six months earlier. Evers had been the state field secretary for the NAACP.

Zinn was also involved in what became known as Freedom Summer in Mississippi in the summer of 1964. Freedom Summer involved bringing 1,000 college students to Mississippi to work for the summer in various roles as civil rights activists. Part of the program involved organizing “Freedom Schools”. Zinn’s involvement included helping to develop the curriculum for the Freedom Schools. He was also concerned that bringing 1,000 college students to Mississippi to work as civil rights activists could lead to violence and killings. As a consequence, Zinn recommended approaching Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett and President Lyndon Johnson to request protection for the young civil rights volunteers. Protection was not forthcoming. Planning for the summer went forward under the umbrella of the SNCC, the Congress of Racial Equality (″CORE”) and the Council of Federated Organizations (″COFO”).

On June 20, 1964, just as civil rights activists were beginning to arrive in Mississippi, CORE activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were en route to investigate the burning of Mount Zion Methodist Church in Neshoba County when two carloads of KKK members led by deputy sheriff Cecil Price abducted and murdered them. Two months later, after their bodies were located, Zinn and other representatives of the SNCC attended a memorial service for the three at the ruins of Mount Zion Methodist Church.

Zinn collaborated with historian Staughton Lynd mentoring student activists, among them Alice Walker, who would later write The Color Purple, and Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund. Edelman identified Zinn as a major influence in her life and, in the same journal article, tells of his accompanying students to a sit-in at the segregated white section of the Georgia state legislature. Zinn also co-wrote a column in The Boston Globe with fellow activist Eric Mann, “Left Field Stands”.

Although Zinn was a tenured professor, he was dismissed in June 1963 after siding with students in the struggle against segregation. As Zinn described in The Nation, though Spelman administrators prided themselves for turning out refined “young ladies”, its students were likely to be found on the picket line, or in jail for participating in the greater effort to break down segregation in public places in Atlanta. Zinn’s years at Spelman are recounted in his autobiography You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times. His seven years at Spelman College, Zinn said, “are probably the most interesting, exciting, most educational years for me. I learned more from my students than my students learned from me.″

While living in Georgia, Zinn wrote that he observed 30 violations of the First and Fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution in Albany, Georgia, including the rights to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and equal protection under the law. In an article on the civil rights movement in Albany, Zinn described the people who participated in the Freedom Rides to end segregation, and the reluctance of President John F. Kennedy to enforce the law. Zinn said that the Justice Department under Robert F. Kennedy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, headed by J. Edgar Hoover, did little or nothing to stop the segregationists from brutalizing civil rights workers.

Zinn wrote about the struggle for civil rights, as both participant and historian.His second book, The Southern Mystique, was published in 1964, the same year as his SNCC: The New Abolitionists in which he describes how the sit-ins against segregation were initiated by students and, in that sense, were independent of the efforts of the older, more established civil rights organizations.

In 2005, forty-one years after he was sacked from Spelman, Zinn returned to the college, where he was given an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters. He delivered the commencement address, titled “Against Discouragement”, and said that “the lesson of that history is that you must not despair, that if you are right, and you persist, things will change. The government may try to deceive the people, and the newspapers and television may do the same, but the truth has a way of coming out. The truth has a power greater than a hundred lies.” (Wikipedia)

• Keywords: American History – Rare · Anarchie · Anarchy · Anti-War Protests · Civil and Political Rights · Civil Disobedience – Rare · Civil Rights Movement in America · Collection · Collection American History Rare · Collection History Rare · Collection Philosophy Rare · Howard Zinn · Philosophy Rare · Political Activism · Political Criticism – Rare · Political Science – Rare · Rudolf Augstein · Signed · Signiert · Sociological History · Sociological Study · Sociology – Rare · Sociology of Culture · Sociology of Knowledge · Spiegel – Affair · Spiegel-Affäre 1962 · Vietnam War · Vietnamkrieg
• Language: English
• Inventory Number: 31136AB

EUR 4.800,-- 

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