Howard Zinn

I'm a bit fed up now with my so-called historian career. But what better way to cheer myself up, than checking out history's cutest historians?

Meet Howard Zinn. He is American, but I found a way to weasel him into Chirayliq: His mother emigrated from Irkutsk.

Here, he isn't a professor yet, but a bombardier in the US Air Force in Europe during the Second World War.



This is one of the reasons he has devoted his life to non-violence and pacifist activism, as well as the post-war Civil Rights movement. (In Private Ryan saves war from 1999 and Dissent at the war memorial from 2004, he tells about his experiences.)

I must confess that I have tried to read Zinn's magnum opus A People's History of the United States, but I'm too bleeding-hearted to get past the introduction. Anything he says, I buy it. (Bad historian, Ainur!) You can read it online or check the publisher's site. You should definitely check the People's History website if you're interested in U.S. history - and I think we all ought to be. (There's also a comic version of The People's History, with this touching scene from WW2 Holland.)