Howard Zinn - Rest in Peace

As a student of history (well sort of...I did take a year's worth of American History in High School as an AP course), I found this course to be one of the highlights of my educational experiences! The importance of the class was that it actually made me think...yes frightful to think that occurred in High School (Farewell to Arms and Calculus also served that role). The class also brought forth ideas that were foreign to most developing students and that was the crap that most textbooks spewed wasn't always the truth...there were differing opinions (shocking!). Obviously history is written by the winners. But Zinn was classic in that he often wrote from a different viewpoint (A People's History of the United States). Some people chided him for "revisionist" history (i.e. Columbus discovered America but he also was a mass murderer who brought European diseases to the New World and only sought to destroy the native cultures...). Columbus Day celebrations have kind of dwindled over the years. The value of Zinn at least to me was that there is always another side. That side might not add a lot to the story but it is important to realize the side exists. That is why Zinn was important to me...in High School he delighted us because of his scandalous views of history. It was such a different feel from the ra ra BS most students get when studying American history. He served as a good foil. This quote sums it up nicely,

"We were not born critical of existing society. There was a moment in our lives (or a month, or a year) when certain facts appeared before us, startled us, and then caused us to question beliefs that were strongly fixed in our consciousness-embedded there by years of family prejudices, orthodox schooling, imbibing of newspapers, radio, and television. This would seem to lead to a simple conclusion: that we all have an enormous responsibility to bring to the attention of others information they do not have, which has the potential of causing them to rethink long-held ideas."
— Changing Minds, One at a Time by Howard Zinn, Published in the March 2005 issue of The Progressive.