Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn wrote 'A People's History of the United States' (1980), which told the American past from below — from the people conquered, enslaved, worked and organised — and became one of the most widely read history books ever published in the country. He chaired history at Spelman College in Atlanta from 1956, where he took part in the civil rights movement, then taught political science at Boston University. He was born in Brooklyn to a Jewish immigrant family: his father Eddie came from Austria-Hungary, his mother Jenny Rabinowitz from Irkutsk in Siberia, and they met working in the same factory.