The Last Book I Read

Howard Zinn takes a lot of heat from folks who don't bother to read his books (or, if they do, they willfully ignore all but the most incendiary parts). Zinn is to my mind a great American patriot, in the same way that folks like Dorothy Day, Phil Ochs, Mort Sahl, Jane Addams, George Seldes (and so many others) are or were great American patriots: they identify those areas where we might collectively do a better job of living up to our core values and ideals. This "graphic adaptation" is a spinoff of Zinn's hugely influential A People's History of the United States, and like that earlier work it would be easy but erroneous to label it a hit job on the nation's past. Looking more closely, what emerges is only partly an indictment, but more significantly, a call to action. The main point is less that mistakes were made in the past, than that we ought to learn from those errors to make sure they are not repeated. This survey of American foreign policy from the latter half of the 19th century to the present is neatly interwoven with Zinn's autobiography, demonstrating how at least one individual came to see how our foreign policy and its architects tended to drift away from any connection to the values evident in the daily lives of the citizens they claimed to serve. It's in that breach where Zinn sees some fertile ground for breeding the kind of collective aversion necessary to stop such ugly adventures as those experienced in places like the Phillipines, Viet Nam and the Middle East over the past hundred-plus years. I think it's an effective argument, and consistent with what Zinn has been advocating for at least the past fifty years. Since this is a graphic novel, I want to also mention the excellent artwork throughout by Mike Konapacki-- it helps make the work more accessible and compelling; the effort is a true collaboration between words and images.