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YOU CAN'T BE NEUTRAL ON A MOVING TRAIN

Name: YOU CAN'T BE NEUTRAL ON A MOVING TRAIN
Author: Howard Zinn
ISBN: 0-8070-7058-0

A PERSONAL HISTORY OF OUR TIMES

by Howard Zinn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 27, 1994

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The eminent radical historian (Boston Univ.; Declarations of Independence, 1990, etc.) recalls his struggles against American racism and war, and he expresses his hope for the future, in this memoir and manifesto. The son of poor Jewish immigrants to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Zinn worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and served as a bombardier in Europe in WW II. He attended Columbia University, received a doctorate in history in 1956, and became head of the history department at Spelman College, an African-American women's school in Atlanta. Zinn's experiences at Spelman radicalized him. A third of this text is devoted to reminiscences about the civil rights struggle in the South. His account is one of ordinary individuals taking small steps to battle racial injustice — integrating the Atlanta library system, sitting in with African-American students at lunch counters as a challenge to Jim Crow statutes, organizing Freedom Rides in Albany, Ga., and voter registration in Selma, Ala., in defiance of racist local governments and often pusillanimous federal authorities. Fired from the traditional Spelman for being too controversial, Zinn came to Boston University, where he opposed the Vietnam War. He describes his outspoken opposition to the war and his trip to Hanoi to repatriate liberated American prisoners. Finally, in a scattershot group of essays, he discusses his civil disobedience, his conflicts with the conservative Boston University administration, and his hope for a more decent society, brought about by ordinary people. Zinn's radical activism will not appeal to every reader, but he does argue persuasively — and relevantly, even for those who do not embrace his critique of America and its institutions — that "small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world."

Pub Date: Sept. 27, 1994

ISBN: 0-8070-7058-0

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Beacon Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | POLITICAL & ROYALTY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
A YOUNG PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES
by Howard Zinn ; adapted by Rebecca Stefoff with by Ed Morales

- BOOK REVIEW
TRUTH HAS A POWER OF ITS OWN
by Howard Zinn with Ray Suarez

- BOOK REVIEW
THE HISTORIC UNFULFILLED PROMISE
by Howard Zinn

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.