Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn, a historian whose "People's History of the United States" resurrected neglected stories of the country's past, becoming a surprise best-seller in the 1980s and beyond, died Wednesday of an apparent heart attack in a swimming pool in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 87.

First published in 1980 with a print run of just 5,000 copies, the book sold more than 2 million copies, including condensations such as "The 20th Century" and "A Young People's History of the United States."

In writing about the economics of the slave trade, the impact of robber barons on ordinary people, the violence against the labor movement and the long struggles of the women's movement, Zinn provided an alternative to the then-dominant "dead white male" version of history.

The approach resonated with readers, who by word of mouth drove it to best-seller status.

Zinn, who had taught at Boston University since 1964, focused "not on the achievements of the heroes of traditional history, but on all those people who were the victims of those achievements, who suffered silently or fought back magnificently," as he said in the preface to one edition.

"His writings have changed the consciousness of a generation and helped open new paths to understanding and its crucial meaning for our lives," Noam Chomsky, the left-wing activist and MIT professor, wrote of his friend.

Zinn's best-known book became a text in high schools and colleges and was endorsed by actor Matt Damon, a former neighbor, in the Academy Award-winning film "Good Will Hunting."

A starting point

But it was not universally appreciated. Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., generally considered a liberal, called Zinn a polemicist rather than a scholar.

Other critics, while acknowledging his originality, said Zinn was both too left-wing in his view of history and too selective within the left, leaving religious and technological thinkers out of his synthesis.