A Power Governments Cannot Suppress

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.

Like Zinn, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress is something of a national treasure. Having fought in World War II as a bombardier, Zinn brings a profoundly human, yet uniquely American perspective to each subject he writes about, whether it’s the Founding Fathers, winning the war on terrorism, respecting the holocaust, or defending the rights of immigrants. Written in an accessible, personal tone, Howard approaches the telling of U.S. history from an active, engaged point of view. “America’s future is linked to how we understand our past,” writes Zinn; “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 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

“Find here the voice of the well-educated and honorable and capable and human 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 Man Without a Country

"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

“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.

Howard Zinn grew up in the immigrant slums of Brooklyn where he worked in shipyards in his late teens. He saw combat duty as an air force bombardier in World War II, and afterward received his doctorate in history from Columbia University and was a postdoctoral Fellow in East Asian Studies at Harvard University. Zinn is author of many books, including Original Zinn: Conversations on History and Politics with David Barsamian, and the million-selling classic, A People’s History of the United States. For more information about Howard and his speaking schedule see http://howardzinn.org.