Howard Zinn (1922-2010) grew up in Brooklyn in a working-class, immigrant household. At the age of eighteen he became a shipyard worker and three years later joined the Air Force where he flew bomber missions during World War II.
He received a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and taught at Spelman College, where he served as an advisor to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and worked with young Civil Rights movement activists, including Alice Walker and Marian Wright Edelman. Zinn led anti-war protests, went to Vietnam with Daniel Berrigan, and testified in Daniel Ellsberg's Pentagon Papers trial.
Zinn was a historian, playwright, and social activist. His most famous book, A People's History of the United States, has sold more than two million copies.