The People’s Historian

As you probably have read at this site and many other venues, my valued mentor and dear friend Howard Zinn has passed away. It is some small evidence of his enormous energy and commitment to his calling that even as he approached his ninth decade Howard was still crisscrossing the United States trying to keep up with never-ending speaking engagements requests. And that he continued to produce provocative and useful work.

Late in his life Zinn took up writing plays (and producing films, collaborating on graphic texts, and editing a People’s History series), three of which have just been published: Three Plays: The Political Theater of Howard Zinn: Emma; Marx in Soho; Daughter of Venus (Beacon Press). The first two dramatizing the lives of Karl Marx and Emma Goldman, and the third a theatrical disquisition on political resistance.

And if you have not availed yourself of the The People Speak, the History Channel documentary produced by Howard (and Chris Moore and Anthony Arnove) that was based on his masterwork, the increasingly influential People’s History of the United States, it is now available on DVD. It’s an incredibly inspiring experience—about how many things can you say that in these plague days?

Rest in peace, Howard Zinn. —Robert Birnbaum, Jan. 28, 2010

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About Our Man in Boston

When Robert Birnbaum was an adolescent, his mother took him to the Chicago Public Library every week, and he would leave with armloads of books. Ever since he has been an avid reader—except in the cultural sinkhole era of the ’70s (think Saturday Night Fever).

Illustration by Witold Ridel

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Friday, July 30, 2010