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Howard Zinn wants you to read his book online, but HarperCollins doesn’t

Posted on Sunday, 20 June, 2010 By yours truly | TOOLS: Talk or Share

Howard Zinn

HIstorian rock star Howard Zinn

People’s historian Howard Zinn has given permission to the folks at History Is A Weapon to put his classic A People’s History Of The United States, online, but that hasn’t stopped HarperCollins from chasing after the website’s developers with threats of a lawsuit for doing so. Last month HIAW published its response to the publishing giant.

While HarperCollins claims both they and the author have not given permission, but the person writing the Cease & Desist order didn’t seem to check her or his facts with Zinn, who had met the HIAW crew in advance and and also gave positive feedback after seeing it online. Download your archived copy here (while supplies last).

The online copy is far from an identical experience to the dead trees version . The site creators scanned the book’s some 650 pages and coded it via hand to correct scanning mistakes, missing some here and there. A lawsuit seems a little ridiculous. The site developers have said they’ll take it offline if and when they ever are asked to do so by Zinn or his family, so HarperCollins could quickly ascertain whether permission was given.

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Rest in Peace Howard Zinn

Posted on Thursday, 28 January, 2010 By yours truly | TOOLS: Talk or Share

Howard Zinn, 1922-2010. A great thinker, activist, contrarian and an eloquent spokesman for the right to dissent. His plea for people to simply pay attention and participate in what happens around them will echo for generations to ocme, and perhaps even be acted on at some future date.

“I’m worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel – let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they’re doing. I’m concerned that students not become passive acceptors of the official doctrine that’s handed down to them from the White House, the media, textbooks, teachers and preachers.” – Howard Zinn

(Obit in The Boston Globe)

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More people would listen to Howard Zinn if his content was online and available to share

Posted on Monday, 12 November, 2007 By yours truly | TOOLS: Talk or Share

Howard ZinnThe word “accommodation” brings to mind the Democratic Party, which was voted into power in Congress in 2006 and which has shown us a pitiful example of what an opposition party should be, accommodating itself basically to the Bush and Republican agenda, accommodating itself to the sort of orthodox political notion that you must be timid and quiet and not speak the truth.

— Howard Zinn speaking on DemocracyNow friday morning

Listen to the segment here.

Just listened to Howard Zinn on Democracy Now’s Friday podcast (the vile in “service” provider Virgin Broadband was down most of Friday and Saturday in London’s lovely SE15 area), discussing a stage version of his book, “Voices of a People’s History of the United States,” called Rebel Voices. The only reason, of course, that I could get this dose of Zinn is because Democracy Now chooses to share its content online for anyone to download. Zinn’s online tech handlers could take a cue from this. So could many others who have their flags planted in the progressive camp, for that matter.

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