Wednesday, January 2 - Duberman on Zinn

Wednesday night at 8 PM on KPFK 90.7 FM:  MARTIN DUBERMAN.  Duberman is a scholar, activist and memoirist whose life stories of Left luminaries and his own memoir, Cures:  A Gay Man’s Odyssey, make him one of our favorite biographers.  Paul Robeson.  Now, two years after historian-activist Howard Zinn’s death, Duberman arrives with a biography of a beloved and esteemed figure, who also happened to be his friend and peer.  The life of a man who eschewed personality politics, yet became a singularly charming and popular ambassador of people’s politics is told, warts and all, by my guest Martin Duberman, in Howard Zinn:  A Life on the Left.  Martin Duberman is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the CUNY Graduate Center, where he founded and directed the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies.  His achievements as a writer and scholar are of course impressive, and he’s been a role model for many, who admire his commitment to both the activist life and to scholarship.  He spoke with me most recently on Bibliocracy about his parallel biographical telling of the lives of two other movement comrades, Barbara Deming and David McReynolds.  Thanks for listening, on the radio, online or as a free download from the station’s archives.  Support community media.