Politics. Cultural Criticism. Compact Disc format. When Howard Zinn was invited to speak at the Taos Talking Film Festival, he took the opportunity to explore how films portray history -- in particular, why historical film so often mirrors an establishment view of history rather than portraying the past from the perspectives of people's history. It took me a while to realize that Hollywood isn't going to make movies that have the effect of making people more class conscious or more anti-war or more conscious of the need for racial and sexual equality... -- Howard Zinn, from the lecture. A CD version of a presentation based on his celebrated book A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES is also available from SPD. 58 minutes.

Author City: Boston, MA USA

Howard Zinn (1922-2010) was raised in a working-class family in Brooklyn, and flew bombing missions for the United States in World War II, an experience he now points to in shaping his opposition to war. Under the GI Bill he went to college and received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. In 1956, he became a professor at Spelman College in Atlanta, a school for black women, where he soon became involved in the Civil rights movement, which he participated in as an adviser to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and chronicled, in his book SNCC: The New Abolitionists. Zinn collaborated with historian Staughton Lynd and mentored a young student named Alice Walker. When he was fired in 1963 for insubordination related to his protest work, he moved to Boston University, where he became a leading critic of the Vietnam War. In his liftetime, Zinn received the Thomas Merton Award, the Eugene V. Debs Award, the Upton Sinclair Award, and the Lannan Literary Award. He is perhaps best known for A People's History of the United States.