From Book News, Inc.
An intellectual biography of Dwight Macdonald, one of the "New York intellectuals" of the 1930s and 1940s and editor of politics, the provocative forum for an international array of thinkers voicing an alternative to the Cold War excesses of both the Left and the Right. Macdonald's story intersects with such dissidents as C.Wright Mills, Mary McCarthy, Albert Camus, Nicola Chiaromone, and Simone Weil--a formidable group, to say the least. politics became their central switchboard as they struggled to create an international dialogue of post-Marxist alternatives to the mass violence of war. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.


Book Description
"Gregory Sumner's book is wonderfully detailed in telling the story of Macdonald and the friends who helped him put out his unforgettable magazine."--Alfred Kazin "The author has captured the spirit of the animators of politics with empathy and precision. I know--I was there. He brings to life key aspects of the radical past that are worth preserving today."--Lewis A. Coser One of the best known and most iconoclastic of the "New York Intellectuals" of the 1930s and 1940s, Dwight Macdonald was also the editor of politics. Sumner tells the story of the magazine's brief, tumultuous season, and brings to life the characters and dramatic moments that made it the forum for debate about the road to peaceful, democratic reconstruction of a war-torn social order. "A scholarly, informed, and impassioned meditation on the potential contribution of Macdonald's political vision for our own times."--Chicago Tribune Born out of revulsion at the mass violence of the Second World War, politics became the center of an international dialogue about post-Marxist alternatives to the Cold War. Sumner tells the story of the magazine's brief, tumultuous season, and brings to life the characters and dramatic moments that made it the forum for debate about the road to peaceful, democratic reconstruction of a war-torn social order.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

One of the best known and most iconoclastic of the "New York Intellectuals" of the 1930s and 1940s, Dwight Macdonald was also the editor of politics, a little magazine that brought together vital and provocative voices to speak against the radical excesses of both the left and the right after World War II. This remarkable collaboration involved dissidents such as C. Wright Mills, Mary McCarthy, Albert Camus, Nicola Chiaromonte, and Simone Weil. In it, Gregory D. Sumner finds the clearest expression of Macdonald's creative power and of the political thinking that would eventually bridge the "Old Left" and the "New". Born out of revulsion at the mass violence of the war, politics became the center of an international dialogue about post-Marxist alternatives to the cold war. Sumner tells the story of the magazine's brief, tumultuous season, and brings to life the characters and dramatic moments that made it the forum for debate about the road to peaceful, democratic reconstruction of a war-torn social order.

FROM THE CRITICS

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