Dave Zirin on the life and legacy of Howard Zinn
Dear friends,
We’re excited to help spread the word about a major new book from MEF’s longtime friend and collaborator Dave Zirin: The People’s Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn, officially out August 4 and available now for pre-order through Penguin Random House.
MEF audiences know Zirin from two of our bestselling films: Behind the Shield: The Power & Politics of the NFL and Not Just a Game: Power, Politics & American Sports, both featuring Zirin and based on his writing. In those films, Zirin brings his signature clarity and moral urgency to the intersection of sports, politics, race, gender, militarism, and power.
With The People’s Historian, Zirin turns that same sharp eye and deep sense of history to Howard Zinn — another longtime ally and collaborator of MEF, and one of the defining radical voices in American public life. Best known as the author of A People’s History of the United States, Zinn helped generations of students and readers understand American history from the standpoint of the people who struggled to change it.
In The People’s Historian, Zirin moves beyond the public figure to give readers a fuller, more intimate picture of Zinn as a historian, teacher, activist, and public intellectual. Drawing on extensive research, Zinn’s personal papers, and the cooperation of Zinn’s family, he follows Zinn’s life across some of the defining conflicts and movements of modern U.S. history, from the Depression and World War II to the Black freedom struggle, the Vietnam era, and the decades of activism and debate that followed.
At a time when the teaching of history has become a flashpoint — with books banned, educators targeted, and honest accounts of power and resistance under attack — The People’s Historian offers a timely and deeply human portrait of a scholar who understood that making sense of the past was inseparable from the struggle to build a more just future.
You can place a pre-order of the book today directly through Penguin Random House.
Thank you, as always, for supporting independent media, critical media analysis, and the work of people who refuse to let history be written only from the top down.
In solidarity,
The MEF Team
Advance Praise for The People’s Historian
“The People’s Historian is a rousing, defiant portrait of an unapologetic
progressive, his battles, and adversaries written in the quintessential Zinn spirit,
Zirin standing up while others are checking out.”
—Howard Bryant, author of Kings and Pawns, Jackie Robinson and Paul
Robeson in America
“A wonderful portrait of a historian who reshaped America’s understanding of its
potential for change.”
——Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Zirin enriches the narrative with interviews and anecdotes from people close to
Zinn while also providing the historical context that shaped his beliefs and
actions … The People’s Historian demonstrates that activism is ongoing.”
—Booklist
“Dave Zirin’s biography of Howard Zinn, the great people’s intellectual, is a
triumph … a measured, finely tuned narrative of an undeniably sweet but
complicated scholar who transformed how we Americans see ourselves.
——Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize-winning coauthor of American Prometheus
“David Zirin — our premier sports historian and cultural critic — has written a brilliant and heartfelt book on the great Howard Zinn — our premier peoples’ historian and social critic! In these grim and dim times, we so badly need Zinn’s genuine witness of deep humanity and prophetic voice of hope and compassion!”
—Dr. Cornel West, New York Times bestselling author of Democracy Matters
“In this compelling portrait of the indomitable Howard Zinn, Dave Zirin offers a definitive account of the nation’s most influential radical historian … Arriving at an urgent moment, this book reminds us that Howard Zinn still has much to teach about resisting the latest threats to American democracy.”
—Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of #From Black Lives Matter to Black Liberation
“Dave Zirin always comes on time because he never stops writing beautiful prose pointed at injustice. The People’s Historian shook free an understanding of Zinn I’d never felt, and made me know that we are so, so prepared to live and fight in 2026″
—Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy: An American Memoir
“There are rare moments when the right biographer tells the story of an epic figure. This is one of them. Dave Zirin’s masterful recounting of the life of Howard Zinn is rich in political detail and ideological insight, yet delightfully warm and compelling in its storytelling. Zirin has given us an exceptional biography of the people’s historian. .”
—John Nichols, New York Times bestselling author of It’s OK to be Angry About Capitalism
“Howard Zinn spoke truth to power… In Dave Zirin, Zinn now has the right biographer: Zirin has given us a book that is clear-eyed and thoughtful and personal and full of levity. A clarion call we have never needed more than in the present moment.”
—Jonathan Coleman, author of Long Way to Go: Black and White in America
“Rousing and reflective … artistically triumphant. … Not only is The Encampments keenly observational about the kind of detail and planning that goes into such movements, it also makes for an intimate aesthetic embodiment of what participating in a protest feels like, in all its hues.”
— IndieWire
