Truth Has a Power of Its Own: Conversations About A People's History

by Howard Zinn

Overview

American history told from the bottom up by Howard Zinn himself—and the perfect all-ages introduction to his eye-opening viewpoint, published on Zinn’s hundredth birthday

Truth Has a Power of Its Own is an engrossing collection of conversations with the late Howard Zinn and “an eloquently hopeful introduction for those who haven’t yet encountered Zinn’s work” (Booklist). Here is an unvarnished, yet ultimately optimistic, tour of American history—told by someone who was often an active participant in it.

Viewed through the lens of Zinn’s own life as a soldier, historian, and activist and using his paradigm-shifting A People’s History of the United States as a point of departure, these conversations explore the American Revolution, the Civil War, the labor battles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, U.S. imperialism from the Indian Wars to the War on Terrorism, World Wars I and II, the Cold War, and the fight for equality and immigrant rights—all from an unapologetically radical standpoint. Longtime admirers and a new generation of readers alike will be fascinated to learn about Zinn’s thought processes, rationale, motivations, and approach to his now-iconic historical work.

Zinn’s humane (and often humorous) voice—along with his keen moral vision—shine through every one of these lively and thought-provoking conversations. Battles over the telling of our history still rage across the country, and there’s no better person to tell it than Howard Zinn.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620977316
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	08/02/2022
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	667,494
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 7.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Howard Zinn (1922–2010) was a historian, playwright, and activist and the author of the bestselling A People’s History of the United States, as well as Truth Has a Power of Its Own: Conversations About A People’s History (The New Press). He received the Lannan Literary Award for nonfiction and the Eugene V. Debs Award for his writing and political activism. Ray Suarez is co-host of the public radio program and podcast World Affairs. He was chief national correspondent for PBS NewsHour and the host of Talk of the Nation on NPR. He is the author of several books, including Latino Americans, as well as Truth Has a Power of Its Own: Conversations About A People’s History (The New Press). He lives in Philadelphia and Washington.

Table of Contents

Foreword Ray Suarez 1

Part I "Change the Story": American Beginnings 11

Part II "They Rebelled": The Long Nineteenth Century 79

Part III "They Began to Organize": The Twentieth Century and Beyond 151

Index 209

Editorial Reviews

“No historian—and few public figures—have ever made radical politics as deliriously and deliciously attractive as Howard Zinn. These conversations with Ray Suarez resurrect Howard for a new generation, including those youth who are fed up with politics as usual. Buy it for the young rabble rouser in your life. As Howard liked to say, ‘We must know our history not only to have knowledge of the past, but to change the future.’”—Dave Zirin, author of A People’s History of Sports in the United States and sports editor, The Nation

“In this short, rich volume, Zinn connects the dots from the abolitionists to Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Movement, leads the reader to question whether there is any ‘good war,’ and encourages us all to see civil disobedience as important as voting in a democracy. It is a guidebook for organizers.”—Deborah Menkart, executive director of Teaching for Change and co-director of the Zinn Education Project

“Truth Has a Power of Its Own is a virtual epilogue to Zinn’s classic work, A People’s History of the United States, and it eloquently shows that Zinn’s mission was not to demonstrate our exceptionalism or our superiority. Instead, he urges us to look squarely at our stained past for the glimmers of human decency and courage which so often have welled up among the ordinary people historians too often ignore.”—Frances Fox Piven, distinguished professor of political science emerita, The Graduate Center, City University of New York

“The conversations in Truth Has a Power of Its Own sing with Howard Zinn’s wisdom, humanity, and wit. Zinn explains how despite unspeakable brutality and exploitation throughout U.S. history, we find hope rising from the social movements that have sought equality and justice. This is a marvelous introduction to the history—a people’s history—of our country.”—Bill Bigelow, curriculum editor, Rethinking Schools, and co-director of the Zinn Education Project

From the Publisher

2019-06-17
A transcription of a long 2007 conversation between Zinn (1922-2010) and then-PBS NewsHour national correspondent Suarez (Latino Americans: The 500-Year Legacy That Shaped a Nation, 2013, etc.), now co-host of World Affairs.

Their conversation is free-wheeling and illuminating, though readers of Zinn's A People's History of the United States (1980) will be familiar with his overriding emphasis on what has not been taught in U.S. history textbooks—namely, the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans and the undercurrents of class conflict between the haves and have-nots. This work is divided into three parts that correspond roughly with the American timeline: "Change the Story," or the gritty, shameful history of the country's founding by genocide, slavery, and an ingrained class struggle that Zinn claims was "the backdrop to the framing of the Constitution in 1787"; "They Rebelled," chronicling the movements of popular dissent and protest that arose especially in the 19th century (e.g., the Lowell Mill strikes, the abolition movement, and agrarian radicalism); and "They Began to Organize," which follows movements that grew in response to inequities, such as the Bonus March of veterans; the grassroots farmers movement; the civil rights, women's, and Indian movements; and the struggles of the LGBTQ community. Zinn is keen to underscore the asymmetry of power and economics and how the poor and powerless often turn against each other rather than their oppressors. He is constantly turning a subject over to look at it a different way, such as the causes of war and "the job of selling the war to the American people." Throughout, Suarez proves to be a capable interviewer, asking solid, specific questions and demonstrating his handle of the many subjects discussed.

A readable and nondogmatic book that will appeal to young people especially as a way to rethink conventional history.

Kirkus Reviews