You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times |
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You Are Here: Home > History Books > Boston Tea Party > Item 246
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You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times
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by Howard Zinn
Sales Rank: 48011
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List Price: $15.00
$10.20
At Amazon
on 10-31-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 224 pages
Published by: Beacon PressEdition: 1st Edition September 5, 2002
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0807071277
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0807071274
Book Dimensions:
9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
Weighs: 12 ounces
Product Review
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
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Noted left-wing historian Zinn ( A People's History of the United States ) believes that activism and education are inextricable, and his memoir illuminates a well-engaged life. Teaching at Atlanta's Spelman College in the early days of the civil rights movement, he found allies in principled students like Marian Wright (now Edelman) and budding writer Alice Walker. He advised SNCC in Selma, Ala. He volunteered to fight the Nazis but, after Hiroshima, developed a skeptical pacifism he further exercised as a passionate opponent of the Vietnam War. Zinn's narrative is oddly disjointed: not until late in the book does he recount his youth in the slums of Brooklyn, his discovery of Dickens, Marx and Steinbeck and his post-WW II years as a laborer and a 27-year-old college freshman. If Zinn is a bit Pollyannish, he's also inspirational, arguing that, because much has changed in history, "We can be surprised again. Indeed, we can do the surprising."
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Reader Reviews
This review is from: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times (Paperback)
I really enjoyed this book. What does come through over and over is Zinn's sense of hope for the future - a sense of hope based on the changes that people can make individually when they speak up and act. Part of what I enjoyed was that the history is connected in a personal way to Zinn and his life, which provided an added richness. This is an interesting story of a fascinating man, but it is also a compassionate and personal view into history and some tumultuous times in the last thirty or forty years. It's hard to read this and not ask yourself questions about what you would have done in the same situation, and it seems to me that it's also difficult to avoid questioning what you can do now. Not that you need to agree with everything Zinn says, by any means. It's a push towards living by your own values, and standing up for what you see as right, even in very small ways. This is not a hard-boiled-hit-you-on-the-head kind of memoir. Zinn has a sense of humor about himself, and doesn't lose a sense of reality. At one point he refuses to pay a fine and spends time in jail. After a night with the cockroaches he changes his mind and pays the fine. He doesn't come off as the perfect saint, only someone consistently willing to say something and someone who consistently tries to do the right thing. I admire him for that. And because of his humanity I can identify with him - and share his hope.
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You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times
Available from Amazon
Price: $10.20
Updated on 10-31-2008.
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