Howard Zinn's Reading List
Notable reader profiled on radicalreads.com. 51 favorite books recommended in their radicalreads feature.
Open in WellRead Daily app →Favorite books (2023)
Favorite books recommended by Howard Zinn, as compiled by radicalreads.com. Source article: https://radicalreads.com/howard-zinn-favorite-books/.
Source: radicalreads.com
sending a dime and a coupon to the New York Post every month to receive a volume of Charles Dickens’ works. He’d go on to read about fascism in Europe through George Seldes’ Sawdust Caesar and The Brown Book of the Hitler Terror , and engage in political debate with the young Communists of his neighborhood. Invited to a peaceful demonstration in Times Square, mounted police would charge and knock Zinn unconscious – marking a turning point in his social ideology: · Buy on Amazon
the college for his support of student protesters, Zinn taught political science at Boston University until his 1988 retirement. He chronicles his journey towards radicalism in the 2002 memoir You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train . · Buy on Amazon
Gary Nash · Buy on Amazon
"A pioneering work of ‘multiculturalism’ dealing with racial interactions in the colonial period."
Dee Brown · Buy on Amazon
"A moving collection of statements and recollections by American Indians, which gives you their point of view in a vivid, passionate way."
John Hope Franklin · Buy on Amazon
"The classic overview of Afro-American history by the nation’s leading Black historian."
Vincent Harding · Buy on Amazon
"Excellent start on Black history."
Herbert Aptheker · Buy on Amazon
"An extremely valuable, I am tempted to say indispensable, collection – not at all dry, as are some documentaries."
Eric Foner · Buy on Amazon
"A rich, vivid, epic-like narrative of those extraordinary years 1863 to 1877, by one of the leading ‘new historians.'"
Richard Drinnon · Buy on Amazon
"A brilliantly written account of imperial expansion by the United States, not just on the American continent against the Indians, but overseas in the Philippines and in Vietnam."
Samuel Yellen · Buy on Amazon
"This brings to life the great labor conflicts of American history, from the railroad strikes of 1877 to the San Francisco general strike of 1934."
Gerda Lerner · Buy on Amazon
"A marvelous collection of the writings of women throughout U.S. history, dealing with childhood, marriage, housework, old age, education, industrial work, politics and sexual freedom."
Gerda Lerner · Buy on Amazon
"A rare glimpse into the lives, the minds, the spirits of that doubly oppressed group, ranging from slavery to our time, a wonderful sourcebook."
Staughton Lynd and Alice Lynd · Buy on Amazon
"A valuable examination of the ideas, in their own words, of early Quaker dissidents, abolitionists, anarchists, progressives, conscientious objectors, trade unionists, civil rights workers and pacifists, from the colonial period to the 1960s."
Richard Hofstadter · Buy on Amazon
"A classic of American history, beautifully written, an iconoclastic view of American political leaders, including Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson and the two Roosevelts, suggesting more consensus than difference at the top of the political hierarchy."
Noam Chomsky · Buy on Amazon
"Here, the nation’s most distinguished intellectual rebel gives us huge amounts of information about recent American foreign policy, and puts it into historical perspective, going back to the Columbus era."
Henry Hampton, Steve Fayer, with Sarah Flynn · Buy on Amazon
"An oral history of the Black movement for civil rights, from the 1950s to the 1980s, much of its material coming out of the research done for the TV documentary, Eyes on the Prize ."
Ronald Takaki · Buy on Amazon
"Gives us what has been glaringly missing from our traditional histories, the story of Asian-Americans, from the early years of the republic, through the dramatic and tragic experiences of Chinese and Japanese immigrants, to the recent arrival of refugees from Southeast Asia."
Elizabeth Martinez. · Buy on Amazon
"Full of marvelous photos, but also an exciting, bilingual text loaded with valuable history."
Alfred Young · Buy on Amazon
"An excellent set of essays by younger historians on various aspects of the American Revolution."
James McPherson · Buy on Amazon
"Along with the traditional military history, there is a lot of political and social history and McPherson pays attention to the role of Black people in that whole period."
W.E.B. Du Bois · Buy on Amazon
"A direct counter to the traditional racist accounts of Reconstruction, presenting the narrative from the Black point of view."
Kenneth Stampp · Buy on Amazon
"For a briefer account of Reconstruction than either Du Bois or Foner."
David Garrow · Buy on Amazon
"The best biography of Martin Luther King Jr., pointing to those elements in his philosophy that have been ignored."
Taylor Branch · Buy on Amazon
"Parting the Waters tells the story of the movement with more attention than is usually given to grassroots activists and to the young people in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee."
Danny Lyon · Buy on Amazon
"An excellent photographic-essay supplement to these books, with wonderful photos and text."
Todd Gitlin · Buy on Amazon
"A vivid history, well-written, thoughtful, by one of the activists of that era."
Bartolme de las Casas · Buy on Amazon
"The closest we can get to an eyewitness account of the terrorism inflicted on the Indians."
Kirkpatrick Sale · Buy on Amazon
"A treasury of information about the Columbus experience and about the treatment of that experience through the centuries."
Hans Koning · Buy on Amazon
"A pioneering, succinct critique of Columbus and his forays."
Eduardo Galeano · Buy on Amazon
"Continues the story of European conquest by tracing the relations between the United States and Latin America from Columbus down to our times. A poetic, powerful account."
Ronald Takaki · Buy on Amazon
"A sweeping and important survey of the history of ethnic groups (including Indians, Blacks, Jews, Irish, Asians, Chicanos and others). Unique."
Larry Gonick · Buy on Amazon
"Funny and remarkably rich in its content."
Philip Foner and Reinhard Schultz · Buy on Amazon
"A fascinating art book – paintings and photographs – of the history of working people in the United States."
Upton Sinclair · Buy on Amazon
Dalton Trumbo (also rec’d by RATM ) · Buy on Amazon
"A powerful antiwar novel written between the two World Wars."
Ron Kovic · Buy on Amazon
"A moving memoir by a badly wounded Vietnam veteran who turned against the war."
John Steinbeck (also rec’d by Bob Dylan , Bruce Springsteen , Nelson Mandela , Ray Bradbury & Tom Wolfe ) · Buy on Amazon
"A powerful introduction to the Depression years."
Malcolm X and Alex Haley (also rec’d by Colin Kaepernick , Gabrielle Union , Ibram X. Kendi , Janelle Monáe, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar , Rose McGowan , Tupac Shakur & Questlove ) · Buy on Amazon
Emma Goldman · Buy on Amazon
"The fascinating story of this feminist-anarchist who outraged the nation in the early years of this century."
Eleanor Flexner · Buy on Amazon
"Overview of women’s movements, with much colorful material."
Barbara Mayer Wertheimer · Buy on Amazon
"A fine history of working women, from colonial times to the First World War."
Susan Cahill · Buy on Amazon
"A rich and wonderful collection of short stories by some of the greatest women writers."
Mel Watkins and Jay David · Buy on Amazon
"Essays and fiction by and about Black women, including work by Maya Angelou, Lena Horne, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright and Lorraine Hansberry."
Alice Walker · Buy on Amazon
"A fascinating set of essays, some autobiographical, some literary criticism, some social commentary."
John Sanford · Buy on Amazon