You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times for $8.40

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"You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times" Overview

"An inspiring autobiography . . . in the tradition of Martin Luther King's 'Letter from a Birmingham Jail.' "
—Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air, National Public Radio

Beacon Press is proud to publish a new edition of the classic memoir by one of our most lively, influential, and engaged teachers and activists. Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States, tells his personal stories about more than thirty years of fighting for social change, from teaching at Spelman College to recent protests against war.


A former bombardier in WWII, Zinn emerged in the civil rights movement as a powerful voice for justice. Although he's a fierce critic, he gives us reason to hope that by learning from history and engaging politically, we can make a difference in the world.

"A teacher who committed his politically engaged life to the belief that love is a command to action."
—Colman McCarthy, The Washington Post

"A powerful, politically electric book from one of the most engaging social critics in the nation."
—Jonathan Kozol

"Zinn explains his involvement in the struggles for civil rights, against war and in support of organized labor. . . . These are lively tales."
—The New York Times Book Review

"You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times" Specifications

By any standards, Howard Zinn has led a remarkable life as teacher, writer, and social activist, a life in which those three categories are viewed not as compartmentalized tasks but as part of a unified identity. You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, a title taken from his advice to students about his take on American history and current events, is a powerful testament to that life.

It begins with his 1956 acceptance of a teaching post at Atlanta's Spelman College, a school for black women that would soon be caught up in the civil rights movement. Zinn, who had already been radicalized on the streets of Brooklyn as a teenager, got caught up along with his students (who included the future head of the Children's Defense Fund, Marian Wright Edelman, and author Alice Walker), and was kicked out in 1963 for "insubordination." He moved to Boston University, where he became an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War, and would prove a constant thorn in the side of university president John Silber throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

Zinn writes in plain language that brooks no nonsense when it speaks of moral urgency, but he isn't above a sense of humor. Noting that the FBI was watching him constantly during the war era, he wryly observes that, "I have grown to depend on them for accurate reports on my speeches." Individual scenes leap out at the reader: Zinn's horror when he realized, years after WWII, that he had dropped napalm bombs on German troops; a meeting in a college classroom with the sister and parents of one of the victims of the Kent State massacre; Selma, Alabama, police beating blacks attempting to register to vote while federal agents stand by and do nothing. Through it all, Zinn writes, "I see this as the central issue of our time: how to find a substitute for war in human ingenuity, imagination, courage, sacrifice, patience." --Ron Hogan

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"You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times" Related Products

• A People's History of the United States (P.S.)
• The Zinn Reader: Writings on Disobedience and Democracy
• American Society: How It Really Works
• Bluebeard: A Novel (Delta Fiction)
• Voices of a People's History of the United States

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