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A review by poisonenvy
Howard Zinn Speaks: Collected Speeches 1963-2009 by Howard Zinn
5.0
I may not know for sure how I came to read this book, but I have a pretty good idea that it was likely because one of these speeches was included in "Rants And Incendiary Tracts" by Bob Black and Adam Parfey in 2016, and I am glad I read it. Howard Zinn was a great speaker, and his speeches really leave you with something to think about. I regret deeply that I hadn't heard of or listened to him when he was still alive.
Howard Zinn has some incredibly thoughtful critiques of America and war mongering. I couldn't help but think throughout all of this what he would have said about Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and the state of America in the present day. I'm sure he would have a lot of really great things to say about it, but I suppose that we'll never really know.
The major problem I had with this book is likely a problem I would have with any speech collections. Speeches, by their nature, have to be repetitive. Someone might not have been to Zinn's 20 speeches before the one they came to, so they wouldn't know all he had to say about Emma Goldman or Shay's Rebellion. But including them all in a book like this got to be painfully repetitive. I don't know how that can be fixed, or even if it could be, aside from perhaps choosing different speeches or cutting parts of speeches (which is definitely not something you should do for all sorts of reasons). But even with all that repetition, it was still a great read.
Howard Zinn has some incredibly thoughtful critiques of America and war mongering. I couldn't help but think throughout all of this what he would have said about Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and the state of America in the present day. I'm sure he would have a lot of really great things to say about it, but I suppose that we'll never really know.
The major problem I had with this book is likely a problem I would have with any speech collections. Speeches, by their nature, have to be repetitive. Someone might not have been to Zinn's 20 speeches before the one they came to, so they wouldn't know all he had to say about Emma Goldman or Shay's Rebellion. But including them all in a book like this got to be painfully repetitive. I don't know how that can be fixed, or even if it could be, aside from perhaps choosing different speeches or cutting parts of speeches (which is definitely not something you should do for all sorts of reasons). But even with all that repetition, it was still a great read.