<TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText>A Power Governments Cannot Suppress</TitleText> <TitlePrefix>A</TitlePrefix> <TitleWithoutPrefix>Power Governments Cannot Suppress</TitleWithoutPrefix>

City Lights Books onix@onixsuite.com 20130218 eng

GCDS-9780872864757 03 01 City Lights Books 01 GCOI 87286100145810 02 0872864758 03 9780872864757 15 9780872864757 BC <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText>A Power Governments Cannot Suppress</TitleText> <TitlePrefix>A</TitlePrefix> <TitleWithoutPrefix>Power Governments Cannot Suppress</TitleWithoutPrefix> 1 A01 Zinn, Howard Howard Zinn 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. City Lights previously published his essay collection A Power Governments Cannot Suppress. We feel lucky and proud to have known and worked with him, and are honored to bring The Historic Unfulfilled Promise to a wide readership. 01 eng 308 01 “Zinn writes with an enthusiasm rarely encountered in the leaden prose of academic history. . .” – New York Times Book Review 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. Howard Zinn unlocks America’s current political/ ethical crisis and challenges us to confront power for the common good. Bringing a profoundly human perspective to the diverse subjects he writes about – the Founding Fathers, government dishonesty, winning the war on terrorism, respecting the holocaust, defending the rights of immigrants – Zinn approaches history from an active, engaged point of view. He writes, “America’s future is linked to how we understand our past. For this reason, writing about history, for me, is never a neutral act.” 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. “To think that history-writing must aim simply to recapitulate the failures that dominate the past,” writes Zinn, “is to make historians collaborators in an endless cycle of defeat.” “If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should, I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, and occasionally win. I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past’s fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare.” 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. "Thank you, Howard Zinn. Thank you for telling us what none of our leaders are willing to: The truth. And you tell it with such brilliance, such humanity. It is a personal honor to be able to say I am a better citizen because of you." —Michael Moore “This brilliant new book – like Howard Zinn’s presence, and his whole life, is the best possible antidote to political despair. Read it, and rejoin the struggle for a human world and a foreign policy that’s good for children.” – Daniel Ellsberg <blockquote> </blockquote> 02 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. 08 "In this collection of thirty-five short essays, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress, Howard Zinn argues that 'people, when organized, have enormous power, more than any government.' But in his introduction and throughout the book, he also suggests another powerful force necessary for changing society-the power of history. . . . As each essay examines contentious issues, from the war in Iraq to land mines to immigrant rights, ZInn demonstrates that history is not just a string of events. It is a powerful weapon that can be used to change the future. . . . The most important essays address the issues surrounding the war in Iraq, putting it into a historical context that is virutally absent-or grossly distorted-in mainstream resources. . . . But what gives this collection its most endearing quality are the essays that touch upon Zinn's own political transformation and the contribution that he has made to the very history of struggle that he records. . . . This book provides a crucial source of inspiration and strength, through the power of history, that what we do matters."-Ellie Fingerman International Socialist Review 08 "With sharp writing shot throughout with historical analysis, Zinn works to raise awareness not only of the individual and systemic injustices regularly dealt to Americans, but also 'the unreported resistance of people against the power of the Establishment. . .'" Social Policy Magazine 08 "This is Zinn the populist, writing about the topics he holds dear, driving home points with the zeal of a true believer. . . The themes are likewise vintage Zinn—resistance to power, economic justice, war and peace, common people doing uncommon things, and the meaning of democracy. The reader will find no new grand thesis, no breakthrough theories, but rather the time-tested arguments that have endeared Zinn to several generations." —David A. Niose The Humanist 08 "Howard Zinn is a genius. A Power Governments Cannot Suppress will be the most enlightening and powerful thing that I will read all year. . . Overall, this collection is the perfect companion to his best selling work, A People's History of the United States. . .This is a must read for anyone struggling to right the wrong they see in this post-9/11 world." —Jeanette Moses Slug Magazine 08 "I love Howard Zinn. This collection of essays is a great book for anybody who wants to be better informed about history, regardless of their political point of view. I think Zinn is one of the most responsible, lively, and brave commentators on U.S. history now living. He's constantly sounding the wake-up call, and we owe it to ourselves and our children to listen." —Viggo Mortensen O, The Oprah Magazine 08 "Howard Zinn is so widely loved because he believes in us and invites us to believe in ourselves and each other. The tile of his latest book, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress, says it all. Michael Moore's film, Sicko, has made a huge impact, not only because it reveals the horrors of the American medical system, but because it shows them to be neither necessary nor inevitable." —Susan Rosenthal Dissident Voice 08 "The narratives...show that when people, average Joes in this country, have had enough with mistreatment or no treatment at all, the citizens will rise up, face the government, and demand that matters be made right. All thirty-five essays in this paperback book will, or should, set your teeth on edge...Highly recommended!" —Jim Sullivan Midwest Book Review 08 " Howard Zinn wants to do history justly. He seeks to bear witness to a past that's never exactly past, and the acts of remembering he demands of his audience (and himself) mesh seamlessly with an intense and determined awareness of present goings-on." —David Dark The Christian Century 08 "[A Power Governments Cannot Suppress] is an extraordinary and inspiring set of reflections that probes, dissects, and challenges all of our orthodoxies related to race, class, just wars, patriotism, law, and justice . . . One of the joys of reading Zinn is that he does all this with humor and an appreciation for the absurd." -Gene Roman Fellowship of Reconciliation 08 “This brilliant new book – like Howard Zinn’s presence, and his whole life, is the best possible antidote to political despair. Read it, and rejoin the struggle for a human world and a foreign policy that’s good for children.” Daniel Ellsberg 08 "This terrific, strong, incisive book by Howard Zinn provides us with a penetrating critique of current U.S. policies and embraces the sweep of history. As always with Zinn’s work, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress leaves us with the faith that citizens have what it takes to confront power and to reverse the dangerous and unjust acts of our government. Zinn’s inspired voice sets him apart from the dry and dull polemics of too many social critics, which is why so many of us look to Howard as a modern-day Thoreau without the crankiness, but all the eloquence and wit of the original. A Power Governments Cannot Suppress is a very important, highly readable, and timely book that I value tremendously." Jonathan Kozol, author of the New York Times bestseller, The Shame of The Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America 08 “Find here the voice of the well-educated and honorable and capable and humane United States of America which might have existed, if only absolute power had not corrupted its third-rate leaders so absolutely.” Kurt Vonnegut, author of A Man Without a Country 08 "Zinn's work exemplifies an approach to history that is radical, regardless of its subject or geographical location. He tells us the untold story, the story of the world's poor, the world's workers, the world's homeless, the world's oppressed, the people who don't really qualify as real people in official histories. Howard Zinn painstakingly unearths the details that the powerful seek to airbrush away. He brings official secrets and forgotten histories into the light and, in doing so, changes the official narrative that the powerful have constructed for us." Arundhati Roy 08 “Unlike the thousands of academic historians who are part of the shrill cheerleading squad for America's elites of power and wealth, Howard Zinn is a unique voice of sanity, clarity and wisdom who reads history not only to understand the present but to shape the future. In easily accessible yet profoundly insightful essays, Zinn shows us how to understand our past and how to push away the ideological charades that historians use to reenforce societal cynicism and despair which paralyzes many who might otherwise be engaged in social change work. A Power Governments Cannot Suppress should be read by every American, over and over again.” Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun Magazine, author of The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country from the Religious Right, and national chair of The Network of Spiritual Progressives. 08 "Zinn collects here almost three dozen brief, passionate essays that follow in the tradition of his landmark work, A People's History of the United States . . . Readers seeking to break out of their ideological comfort zones will find much to ponder here." Publishers Weekly 08 Written by historian, playwright, and World War II veteran Howard Zinn, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress is a scathing attack against America's political and ethical failings, using examples of atrocities America perpetuated in history – from massacres in Vietnam to abuses of Chinese immigrant labor workers to complicity in the genocide of East Timor and much more – to add context to current ills such as the extended toll of the war in Iraq. "There is no certainty as to what would happen in our absence [in Iraq]. But there is absolute certainty about the result of our presence – escalating deaths on all sides." Zinn is firmly anti-death penalty and decries its usage as well. Of especial interest in A Power Governments Cannot Suppress is the author's denouncement of a disturbing tendency to compartmentalize the Holocaust, to forget the millions of non-Jews that were executed along with 6 million Jews, and worse, neglect the occurrence of modern acts of genocide thereby betraying the memory of victims of the Holocaust genocide. A strident call to action, speaking out against governmental and human misdeeds, and vociferously encouraging the reader to stand up and take action. Midwest Book Review 08 "Thank you, Howard Zinn. Thank you for telling us what none of our leaders are willing to: The truth. And you tell it with such brilliance, such humanity. It is a personal honor to be able to say I am a better citizen because of you." Michael Moore 08 "Zinn writes with an enthusiasm rarely encountered in the leaden prose of academic history. . ." New York Times Book Review 04 02 72 01 http://www.citylights.com/resources/titles/87286100145810/images/87286100145810L.gif 07 02 72 01 http://www.citylights.com/resources/titles/87286100145810/images/87286100145810S.gif http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100145810 City Lights Publishers 01 City Lights Publishers 20061201 01 8 in 02 5.25 in 08 17 oz City Lights Books 01 WORLD 20 20061201 01 02 16.95 USD