The influential author, scholar and political activist, Howard Zinn died in Santa Monica on January 27th apparently from a heart attack while swimming. He was 87 years of age.

The respected academic was best known for his monumental A People’s History of the United States which chronicles the history of America from a working class perspective and has sold almost two million copies worldwide. As he explained in 2004 he wanted “histories that showed working people and black people and Native Americans and women. And I was aware that no such book existed, that no such history existed. So I decided that I would try to fill that gap.”

Born in 1922 in Brooklyn to working class Jewish immigrant parents he grew up in the slums of New York working on the docks as a teenager where he became radicalised after being beaten unconscious by police during a political rally in Times Square. He later went on to fly combat missions over Europe for the US Air Force during WW2 before starting a family with his wife Roslyn, earning a living loading trucks while studying for a degree in history and political science.

He became a prominent civil rights, workers rights, and anti-war activist, speaking at hundreds of meetings and rallies, being arrested on several occasions, while continuing to write and teach history from below. Through his numerous books he remains one of the giants of radical politics.

He’s survived by two children, Myla Kabat-Zinn and Jeff Zinn, and five grandchildren.