Howard Zinn was and still is one of my heroes. He tells it "like it is."
Too many children grow up in America inculcated with false beliefs that leave them vulnerable to later propaganda and manipulation. I hear again and again from Americans who insist that dropping the atomic bombs was necessary to end WWII and who have no idea that a major motivation was to try to scare the Soviets into not messing with us. Perhaps even more disheartening are the college students I see who think the US entered WWII to stop the Holocaust. It serves the war machinery well when young people grow up being told again and again that Americans fight only for peace and justice. I am eager to read his final book.
P.S. Tomorrow I am launching a new blog:
engagingpeace.com
hope to hear from you there.

As a companion piece - Maybe the sobering book by John Hersey should have a commemorative edition "Hiroshima" d set- and then made into a boxed set.

Howards new book, I WILL get. I will have my friend, Artist, Poet, & Hiroshima survivor: Thomas Takashi Tanamori write a dedication to my Children inside, to pass on to Their Children should any be brave enough to propagate the species in such times as these, though I've begged all 3 of mine to NOT reproduce Until such time as America is living up to it's claims of "liberty", FREEDOM & JUSTICE for ALL. That means everyone, & Vets who suffer w/PTSD cultivating in our own yards & gardens, Whats needed to sustain mental health and wellbeing. END PROHIBITION Plant a seed for Justice. No tax No Regulate. Sales tax on HEMP PRODUCTS ONLY

What Zinn experienced in WW11 was what really began in WW1. The ability to kill and inflict great property damage at a distance. From high in the sky, terror and death could be rained down on the targets below, but the ones doing the killing and destroying rarely saw the results of their actions. It was psychologically advantageous to any military unit to keep their human killing machines as emotionally detached as possible. War at the push of a button or the release of a lever is a lot different than the hand to hand combat man engaged in for many centuries. A cleaner, more efficient manner to continue the barbarism. Today we have predator drones controlled, I'm read, from somewhere in Nevada! killing people in Afghanistan and Pakistan. No national draft, less than 1/10% of Americans actually seeing overseas action, virtually no graphic images of the realities and carnage of what's really happening in Iraq and Afghanistan and the continuing reminder that to be a "patriot" you must "support the troops".

Howard Zinn helped shape the way i think today, I always wished that world leaders were more like him. He lives on in his work.

I was exposed to Howard early in my life. Through a complete stroke of luck, in 1968 I got my hands on a copy of his limited published, but widely circulated 'Vietnam - The Logic of Withdrawal'. I was already vaguely opposed to the war, but reading Zinn's book really convinced me to become an antiwar activist. Last August, I was again fortunate to be in Cape Cod where he gave one of his last lectures called 'The Myth of the Good Wars'. It was awesome and classic Howard.
You can see my video recording of Howard Zinn here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrhSuEhJ4OY

You taught us much and we loved you Howard!

The moral basis for opposing war is a necessary substrata for ending it but not sufficient. Only a small portion of the public will oppose war on a moral basis, and an even smaller percentage will act on their belief. We must also look for ways to make war too costly for the masses of ordinary taxpayers and publicize the idea that, with less military expenditure, tax rates could be radically reduced. One component of doing this is to transform the American global military posture into a multilateral police force to contain the various venues of violence that continually erupt. The capital dominated enterprise system would also need to undergo some adaptation, but that cannot be FORCED on society.