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Howard Zinn tells history, in comic form
By Associated Press
Saturday, April 5, 2008
http://www.bostonherald.com
Books
"A People’s History of American Empire" (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt &
Co., 276 pages. $17 paperback/$30 hardcover), by Howard Zinn,
illustrated by Mike Konopacki, edited by Paul Buhle. Zinn is famous for
his 1980 book, "A People’s History of the United States." If history is
usually written by the victors, Zinn tells it from the view of the
oppressed, be they workers exploited by robber barons or minorities
denied due rights.
It’s basically the same story here, but with cartoons. This is an
illustrated history of America’s often deadly meddling around the globe.
It’s written mostly in Zinn’s voice, though he shares the duty. Black
Elk tells the story of Wounded Knee, Mark Twain offers commentary on the
Moro Massacre in the Philippines and Daniel Ellsberg describes leaking
the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War.
The villain in this book is the United States. Presidents Woodrow
Wilson, Dwight Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter -- capitalist tools all, in
Zinn’s telling. Zinn has a habit of presenting every action by U.S.
officials as sinister.
If President Harry Truman gave a millisecond of thought about sparing
the lives of American troops when he decided to drop the atomic bomb,
there’s no mention of it here. Instead the decision is cast as a bid to
keep Russia out of postwar Japan.
The drawings aren’t the only things that are black and white in this book.
The book is leavened by autobiographical vignettes. Zinn, a product of
Depression-era Brooklyn, said he became a radical after being cracked on
the noggin by a police officer’s nightstick at an antifascism rally. He
later served as a bombardier in World War II and tells of once dropping
napalm on German soldiers and, he learned later to his horror, French
civilians.
The illustrations are simple and emotive, matching the often grim
material. But the value in this book, like its forebear, is that it
tells interesting stories worth knowing, from the 1914 Ludlow Massacre
in Colorado to zoot suit culture in postwar Los Angeles. Turns out you
really can learn things from comics.
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://tinyurl.com/2gcoqt
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
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News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
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Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is
in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"
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