Howard Zinn (August 24, 1922–January 27, 2010) was a historian, author, professor, playwright, and activist.
In 2005, Howard Zinn gave a talk at MIT, offering an account of American imperialism spanning the last hundred years noting tactics that the United States uses, such as extraordinary rendition and shared the various reasons the United States goes to war. He ended on a note of hope, reminding us of all of the great social movements this country has had and will likely have again.
On August 4, 2026, Dave Zirin‘s biography of Howard Zinn, The People’s Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn, was released by Penguin Random House. Zirin is a journalist for The Nation Magazine and is the author of A People’s History of Sports in the United States, which was a part of the Zinn-curated People’s History series at The New Press.
