Running Commentary: The Contentious Magazine That Transformed the Jewish Left Into the Neoconservative Right

By Benjamin Balint

Book Overview

In the years of cultural and political ferment following World War II, a new generation of Jewish- American writers and thinkers arose to make an indelible mark on American culture. 'Commentary' was... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1586487493
• ISBN13: 9781586487492
• Release Date: June 2010
• Publisher: PublicAffairs
• Length: 290 Pages
• Weight: 1.18 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.6" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

A thoroughly gripping read!

This is one of the best examples of intellectual history I can remember reading--it's a page-turner, I couldn't put it down. Deftly written and entertaining, it's both even-handed and sharp-eyed about the personalities and politics of the journal up to the present. The story goes far beyond Commentary though, Balint begins with the arrival of Jews in America and sketches the political and intellectual trajectory of successive generations with lively acuity; his range of historical and political knowledge is stunning. Let me add that I'm neither a reader nor a fan of Commentary! But this book paints a fascinating picture of 20th century intellectual life and of the "New York Intellectuals", full of amazing tidbits--it was Podhoretz who plucked Philip Roth's first short story out of the slush pile and published it, for instance. Who knew? The journal's decline into intellectual and literary sclerosis as it moved rightward is well-told; Balint makes the interesting point that the commitment to exporting so-called American freedoms around the world increasingly stopped at the journal's own threshold, the imaginatively challenging writing of the early years sacrificed to tow the neo-con party-line.