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A Power Governments Cannot Suppress

Howard Zinn
Edition: pb
ISBN: 9780872864757
Publisher: City Lights
Release Date: 2006-11-20
ITEM OVERVIEW
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress is Howard Zinn's major new collection of essays on American history, class, immigration, justice, and ordinary citizens who have made a difference. Zinn opens the book with an essay titled "If History is to be Creative," a reflection on the role and responsibility of the engaged historian. Buzzing with ideas, stories, and anecdotes spanning from the Revolutionary War and the War with Mexico through to World War II, Vietnam, 9/11, and the U.S. occupation of Iraq, Zinn's view of American history is not a praise of famous leaders, but those who rebelled against them in the name of social justice. While writing extensively on current events and the consequences of U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Iraq, Zinn also dedicates entire chapters to troublemakers like Henry David Thoreau, Eugene Debs, Philip Berrigan, Italian immigrants Sacco & Vanzetti, and heralds not the soldiers who fought for George Washington, but those who deserted the Revolutionary Army because of intolerable mistreatment from elitist commanding officers. For Zinn, the voices and stories of ordinary working Americans, immigrants, working people, and soldiers comprise the real storyline of our history. Featuring essays penned over an eight-year period, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress is Howard Zinn's first writerly work in several years, an invaluable post-9/11-era addition to the themes that run through his bestselling classic, A People's History Of the United States.