SOURCE: Cohen, Carl. “Civil Disobedience: Moral or Not?” Nation 207, no. 19 (2 December 1968): 597, 599-600.

In the following review, Cohen praises Zinn's Disobedience and Democracy as an insightful book that should be widely read and discussed, although he challenges the bases for many of Zinn's arguments.

Civil disobedience has become one of the most puzzling and provocative issues of the times. There are two kinds of reasons for this. First, those who have recently been engaging in disobedient demonstrations have done so, most usually, to register vehement protest against laws, acts and conditions that cry out for remedy, while remedy continues to elude us. The barbarity of the war in Vietnam; the cruelty of racism at home; the maldistribution of wealth and power; and, above all, the apparent unwillingness or inability of our national institutions—Congress, the courts, private enterprise—to deal effectively with injustice, frustrates and angers all decent citizens...