Linda Stoutgrew up in North Carolina, daughter of a "mill-town girl" and a tenant farmer, later a mill worker. She was a 13th generation Quaker who grew up inspired by the Quakers' tradition of speaking up for their beliefs. She started the Piedmont Peace Project (PPP) in North Carolina in 1984. Winner of the National Grassroots Peace Award, she helped build the PPP into one of the strongest multi-racial, multi-issue low-income organizations in the state. After 10 years at PPP, she moved on in search of how to build power and do movement building at the national level. She moved to Massachusetts and directed a foundation, the Peace Development Fund, before starting a new organization,… Spirit in Action, where she is now the director.
Howard Zinn grew up in the immigrant slums of Brooklyn, where he worked in shipyards in his late teens. He saw combat duty as an air force bombardier in World War II, and afterward received his doctorate in history from Columbia University. His first book, "La Guardia in Congress", was an Albert Berveridge Prize winner. In 1956, he moved with his wife and children to Atlanta to become chairman of the history department of Spelman College. He has since written and edited many more books, including A People's History of the United States, SNCC: The New Abolitionist; Disobedience and Democracy; The Politics of History; The Pentagon Papers: Critical Essays; You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving… Train: A Personal History of Our Times; and The Zinn Reader (Seven Stories Press, 1997). The Spanish-language edition of A People's History of the United States, La otra historia de los Estados Unidos, is due to be released later this year by Seven Stories Press under its Spanish-language imprint, Siete Cuentos Editorial. Zinn is also the author of three plays, Emma, Daughter of Venus, and Marx in Soho. Among the many honors Zinn has received, the most recent is the 1998 Lannan Literary Award for nonfiction. A professor emeritus of political science at Boston University, he lives with his wife, Roslyn, in the Boston area, near their children and grandchildren.