You can't be neutral on a moving train : a personal history of our times / Howard Zinn.

This item includes an index.

Introduction: the question period in Kalamazoo --

Part one: The South and the movement. Going South: Spelman College -- "Young ladies who can picket" -- "A president is like a Gardner" -- "My name is freedom" : Albany, Georgia -- Selma, Alabama -- "I'll be here" : Mississippi --

Part two: war. A veteran against war -- "Sometimes to be silent is to lie" : Vietnam -- The last teach-in -- "Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order" --

Part three: scenes and changes. In jail: "the world is topsy-Turvy" -- In court: "the heart of the matter" -- Growing up class-conscious -- A yellow rubber chicken : battles at Boston University -- The possibility of hope.

"Acclaimed historian Howard Zinn has been at the center of the most important historical moments of the last thirty years, during which he has been admired both as a writer and as an important political and moral voice. Author of the epic A Peoples History of the United States, Zinn here applies his historian's skills to the remarkable life he himself has led. In this inspiring, personal book - which works both as a memoir and as popular history of an era - Zinn brings to life more than thirty years of American social history by telling the stories behind a politically engaged life. Zinn grew up in the immigrant slums of Brooklyn and flew as a bombardier in World War II, and he writes about his first teaching job at Spelman College, where he worked with young civil rights activists including Alice Walker and Marian Wright Edelman. He paints vivid, portraits of key moments and people throughout the South in the early 1960s, where he was a chronicler and active ally of the civil right movement. He talks about his days as a leading antiwar protester, going to Vietnam with Daniel Berrigan and testifying in he friend Daniel Ellsberg's Pentagon Papers trial. He recalls imprisonment for civil disobedience, fights for open debate in universities, his love of teaching. Running throughout this personal book is Zinn's charming, generous, engaged voice, as well as a message about history. You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train is Zinn's argument for hope - the stories of the people and events that inspire his faith in the possibility of historic change. Howard Zinn is author of many books including A peoples History of the Unite States and Declaration of Independence. He is professor of political science emeritus at Boston University." -- From the dust jacket.