When he died in Jan­u­ary at age 87, his­to­ri­an Howard Zinn was still haunt­ed by the ghosts of World War II. He dis­cussed his career as a bom­bardier often and cit­ed his par­tic­i­pa­tion in war as the main cat­a­lyst for his oppo­si­tion to it. He spent much of his post-com­bat life con­sid­er­ing how he had dropped bombs on inno­cent civil­ians with­out ask­ing why – and how to stop bombs from drop­ping in the future.

In pondering whether dropping the bomb was just or unjust, we rarely hear the testimony of a 16-year-old Japanese schoolgirl who saw “a woman with her jaw missing and her tongue hanging out of her mouth … crying for help.”

In The Bomb (City Lights), Zinn offers brief his­to­ries of the two events that shook him most dur­ing that war: the drop­ping of the atom­ic bomb on Hiroshi­ma, and the lit­tle-known assault on the French port town of Roy­an, in which Zinn him­self par­tic­i­pat­ed. At the time, he was emo­tion­al­ly dis­tant from the dev­as­ta­tion in both cas­es. The Bomb serves almost as his apol­o­gy – as well as a call against arms.

The book’s first essay, ​“Hiroshi­ma,” does not offer new cri­tiques of the bomb­ing, but rather pro­vides a his­tor­i­cal analy­sis of the hor­rors wrought by ​“Lit­tle Boy” that is still absent from most con­ver­sa­tions about the war.

In pon­der­ing whether drop­ping the bomb was just or unjust, we rarely hear the tes­ti­mo­ny of a 16-year-old Japan­ese school­girl who saw ​“a woman with her jaw miss­ing and her tongue hang­ing out of her mouth … cry­ing for help.” Or a fifth-grader’s remem­brance: ​“I do not know how many times I beg[ged] they would cut off my burned arms and legs.” Zinn’s inclu­sion of these tes­ti­monies, along with an exam­i­na­tion of the Japan­ese sur­ren­der already with­in sight and the con­text of the soon-to-begin Cold War, pro­vide cor­rec­tives to an event con­sid­ered beyond reproach by many Americans.

“The Bomb­ing of Roy­an” chron­i­cles the after­math of Zinn’s last mis­sion over the French town in 1945, where Ger­man gar­risons were sta­tioned. He returned to Roy­an in 1966 to research the effects of the napalm and bombs he dropped.

The bomb­ing of Roy­an is a per­fect exam­ple of war as a ​“dead­ly work of obvi­ous use­less­ness,” and the recon­struc­tion of its his­to­ry could not be in more capa­ble hands. Zinn points out that like Hiroshi­ma, vic­to­ry against the Ger­mans was on the hori­zon, and the pum­mel­ing of Roy­an that killed hun­dreds of civil­ians was strate­gi­cal­ly unwarranted.

He quotes a local com­man­der: “‘It would have been log­i­cal to wait for Germany’s sur­ren­der, and thus avoid new human and mate­r­i­al loss­es,’ but one could not ​‘ignore impor­tant fac­tors of [the Allied troops’] morale.’” Pages before, Zinn quotes a French civil­ian who called the bomb­ing ​“such hell as we nev­er believed pos­si­ble.” The jux­ta­po­si­tion illu­mi­nates the gulf between those who wage war and those who expe­ri­ence it.

Zinn’s last book is a mod­est appeal to human­i­ty: War is mis­er­able, and we have to stop it. The final sen­tences of The Bomb will serve well to rep­re­sent his lega­cy: ​“Any­one can throw a wrench into the machin­ery,” he clos­es. We must ​“act on what we feel and think, here, now, for human flesh and sense, against the abstrac­tions of duty and obedience.”