Interview- Howard Zinn

It is unlikely that 20 years ago, when Howard Zinn's magnum opus A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to the Present was published, that anyone thought it would sell close to two million copies and spawn an entirely new historiography. Today, though not quite a household name, spry octogenarian Zinn is a much in-demand lecturer, criss-crossing the country, speaking to crowded halls and auditoriums and continuing his life-long commitment to social justice activism.

Zinn’s radically revisionist analysis of history from the grassroots up is of a piece with his support for various progressive movements and causes—from labor to civil rights, to Vietnam, to the women’s liberation movement. He unflinchingly protested the American imperial adventures that have taken place around the planet, from Cuba to Chile to Haiti to Grenada to Panama to Nicaragua, and, of course, Iraq. And his refusal to sequester himself in the proverbial ivory tower of the academy is a story delightfully related in his autobiography You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train.

In this, my fourth or fifth public conversation with him, Zinn talks about whether he has changed his views and shares his thoughts on the upcoming election and the newly published graphic/comic A People’s History of American Empire with historian Paul Buhle, and cartoonist Mike Konopacki. A shorter version of this conversation appeared in Vice Magazine as “Zinn and the Art of History Maintenance.”