You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew

Here's a personal favorite. This autobiography by the great activist and historian (who wrote the pioneering multicultural history, A People's History of the United States, long before the term "multiculturalism" was in vogue) provides an eloquent, personal account of the struggles for civil rights and against the Vietnam war, and a universal paean to protest and resistance.

At bottom, Zinn, like all humanitarian radicals, has nurtured throughout his life "an indignation against the bullies of the world, those who used wealth or military might or social status to keep others down," he writes.

Zinn defies chronological and autobiographical order and jumps right into the action. In the first part of the book, "The South and the Movement," Zinn discusses his days as chair of the history department at Spelman College in Atlanta, and his eventual firing for encouraging his students--including Alice Walker and Marian Wright--to participate in civil-rights protests. He follows his involvement in the movement to Albany, Georgia; Selma, Alabama; and Greenwood, Mississippi, where he encounters Martin Luther King Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, Julian Bond, James Farmer, and Bob Moses, as well as many unsung heroes whose praise he sings.

The second part of the book is simply entitled, "War." it mostly discusses the many Vietnam protests which Zinn participated in, spoke at, or helped lead, and it recounts the trip he and Daniel Berrigan took to Vietnam in 1968 to bring back three American pilots whom the North Vietnamese government was releasing.

But the section begins with Zinn's discussion of his evolution as a pacifist, and this account took on a particular poignance for me, since it reminded me of many conversations I'd had with Erwin over the years on the very question of pacifism in the face of Hitler--a position I still have trouble accepting.

Zinn was a bomber in World War II, an ardent believer in the need to fight fascism by force of arms. One pivotal event came when Zinn and his fellow pilots were ordered to bomb a few thousand German soldiers who were trapped in Royan, France, a few weeks before the war ended. There was nothing to be gained militarily from the action; what's worse, the bombing mission used not the traditional weapons but "jellied gasoline," Zinn recalls. "They didn't use the word, and I only realized long after the war that this was an early use of napalm." Zinn also credits John Hersey's Hiroshima for transforming his view of...