We All Need Heroes

I recently came across with Howard Zinn and Rebecca Stefoff's "A Young People's History of the United States." This is a condensed and simplified version of Zinn's classic work with almost the same title and does not miss the insights and dissenting spirit of the original work. This condensed version is aimed at reaching the younger generation.

Wanted to share a quote from the backcover of Volume I:

"We all need heroes, people to admire, to see as examples of how human beings should live. But I prefer to see Bartolomé de Las Casas as a hero, for exposing Columbus's violent behavior against the Indians he encountered in the Bahamas. I prefer to see the Cherokee Indians as heroes, for resisting their removal from the lands on which they lived. To me, it is Mark Twain who is a hero, because he denounced President Theodore Roosevelt after Roosevelt had praised an American general who had massacred hundreds of people in the Phillippines. I consider Helen Keller a hero because she protested against President Woodrow Wilson's decision to send young Americans into the slaughterhouse of the First World War. My point of view, which is critical of war, racism and economic injustice, carries over to the situation we face in the United States today." - Howard Zinn

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