Admiring ... Zirin...does a lively job of portraying the historian’s deeply engaged life ... Zirin’s book evokes these battles well but falls short of being a judicious assessment of his subject. In Zirin’s eyes, Zinn was always right ... The biography also tends toward clichés and overstatements.
The People’s Historian also replicates one of ’s flaws: It can flatten complex problems and people into apparently simple ones ... Zirin’s weakest chapter is the one on A People’s History itself. He has assigned himself the task of defending Zinn from criticisms, even relatively friendly ones ... [An] admiring biography.
