Howard Zinn: A Life On The Left

by Martin Duberman

(Verso, £13.99)

Howard Zinn was one of the most respected left historians to emerge in the US during ther last century. Born into a poor Jewish immigrant family, he grew up under the harsh conditions of 1920s New York and he never forgot that background.

Zinn was one of those rare academics who wasn't satisfied with merely sitting in his office, writing or lecturing students on campus.

He was at the centre of landmark events in modern US history, from WWII to the McCarthy era, the civil rights and antiwar movements and beyond. A bombardier who later renounced war, a son of working-class parents who earned a doctorate at Columbia university, a white professor who taught at the historically black Spelman College in Atlanta, he was a devoted "people's historian."

He joined picket lines, marches and sit-ins, remaining a committed activist all his eventful life. He became part of the early civil rights movement in the South, setting up freedom schools to help educate young blacks who were denied access to a proper education about their own history.

One of the first to join the anti-Vietnam war struggles, Zinn suffered vitriolic abuse and accusations of being a "communist dupe."

But Zinn never joined any political party.

He was not an ideologue but his keen sense of justice and anti-militarism kept him at the forefront of progressive struggles throughout the 20th century. He could be best defined as a socialist with anarchist leanings - he believed in democracy from the bottom up not top down.

His most memorable work, A People's History Of The United States, has become a renowned and basic text.

In it he rewrote US history as movements of people rather than as lists of presidents and military adventures and he put back into the historical narrative those individuals, movements and organisations ignored, omitted and forgotten by most historians.

Martin Duberman, the author of this fascinating biography, has a great track record of writing books about the left in the US, including a magnificent biography of Paul Robeson. This absorbing book is in that tradition.

It is, though, not just a portrait of a great man, but at the same time a history of that turbulent century in US history.