BOOK REVIEW : A Lion of the Left Roars Again : DECLARATIONS OF INDEPENDENCE, <i> by Howard Zinn</i> . Harper & Row. $25, 336 pages

“In fourteen-hundred and ninety-two,” as we all learned in grade school, “Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” But how many of us know that Columbus “committed irreparable crimes against the Indians,” including “mass murder”?

We all know about the Boston Massacre, but what about the Ludlow Massacre of 1914, when the National Guard machine-gunned an encampment of striking coal miners and set their tents afire?

These dirty little secrets of American history are spoken out loud by political scientist (and political activist) Howard Zinn in “Declarations of Independence,” a shotgun blast of revisionism that aims to shatter all the comfortable myths of American political discourse.

Zinn’s book is history at a fast boil, a strong dose of progressive and even radical ideas brewed up by an old soldier of the left.

Zinn is plain-spoken about the purpose of “Declarations”: He seeks to smash the icons of what he calls “the American orthodoxy,” and to change the way we think about our country and its destiny.

“How we think is not just mildly interesting, but a matter of life and death,” writes Zinn. “If those in charge of our society--politicians, generals, corporate executives and owners of press and television--can control our ideas, they will be secure in their power. If they dominate our thought, they will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.”

Zinn methodically debunks the conventional wisdom of American politics, starting with human nature itself (“I have never been persuaded that . . . violence . . . was the result of some natural instinct”) and ranging through war and peace, law and order, freedom and democracy. “Declarations” is a boxed set of progressive ideals, a shining vision of America and the world according to Zinn.

On justice: “The modern system of the rule of law is something like roulette,” Zinn argues. “Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose.”

On civil disobedience: “Historically, the most terrible things--war, genocide and slavery--have resulted from obedience, not disobedience.”

On freedom of speech: “To depend on the simple existence of the First Amendment to guarantee our freedom of expression is a serious mistake, one that can cost us not only our liberties but, under certain circumstances, our lives.”

On the pursuit of happiness: “The American economic system is enormously productive, but shamefully wasteful and unjust. It is shocking, it is irrational, it is unjust, that in a country as wealthy as the United States, any human being living within its borders should not have . . . the fundamental requirements of existence . . . food, housing, medical care, education, and work.”

Zinn is a political scientist at Boston University and the author of a dozen books on politics and history, including “A People’s History of the United States.”

But he is no ivory-tower intellectual. Zinn prides himself on his experiences as a shipyard worker, a labor and civil-rights activist and a bombardier in World War II, all of which shaped his values and directed him toward activism instead of contemplation:

“I decided early that I would be biased in the sense of holding fast to certain fundamental values: the equal right of all human beings . . . to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, Jefferson’s ideals,” Zinn writes. “It seemed to me that devoting a life to the study of history would be worthwhile only if it aimed at those ideals.”

“Declarations of Independence” is spirited, provocative and intentionally unsettling. And Zinn appears to regard himself as a progressive on the cutting edge of political activism:

“The coming of a new century may be the right time for people all over the world to discard old orthodoxies, frozen dogmas, simple definitions,” he urges, “(and) to seek out good ideas wherever they are because we desperately need them.”

But there is an irony at work here--I detect something old-fashioned and even antique about Zinn’s “Declarations,” and I came away from his book with a sense of nostalgia rather than an impulse to join the barricades.

Zinn is a clear thinker, a careful writer, and a profoundly compassionate man. He is well-read, well-educated and he draws gracefully and convincingly from the wellsprings of our civilization: Sophocles, Thomas More, Tolstoy, Freud, Einstein. And, at heart, the old lion of the left has a gentle and even a refined nature.

Next: Richard Eder reviews “The Snake Game” by Wayne Johnson (Alfred A. Knopf).