From Publishers Weekly
Irving Howe's 1976 The World of Our Fathers-a bestselling masterpiece of cultural history, as well as an "implicitly autobiographical" work-has become a classic of Jewish-American history and secured Howe a prominent place in American letters, even while many of his other major works-a 1951 literary study Sherwood Anderson, or his 1957 Politics and the Novel-now go unread. Howe's life and career are emblematic of many Jewish intellectuals of his time. He was born in 1920 and raised in the crushing poverty of the Depression; both of his parents worked long days for low wages in the garment industry. Howe's family instilled in him an intellectual life and the "quest for absolute perfection." Howe early joined the Young People's Socialist League, and his involvement with the heady intellectual political atmosphere at City College of New York prepared him for his later published work in Commentary and Partisan Review in the 1940s, his founding of Dissent in the 1950s and his influential career as a critic and political commentator. Sorin is primarily interested in Howe's intellectual and political life. And while he does include some words critical of Howe-such as a critique of Howe's famous attack on Kate Millett's Sexual Politics, in which his subject called the author a "female impersonator"-Sorin's tone is overwhelmingly adulatory, even fawning. While Sorin did interview nearly 50 informants, much of the material comes from Howe's autobiographical writings. This is an important first step in re-examining a major intellectual and should serve as a springboard for more in-depth and balanced evaluations. Photos. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
An ardent and controversial advocate for liberalism and literature, distinguished professor and prolific writer Howe died in 1993 at age 73. Historian Sorin, Howe's first biographer, skillfully captures the illuminating fire of Howe's convictions, conflicts, and achievements, even though he's had to work without the benefit of Howe's family's personal reminiscences or private papers. But memories of Howe remain fresh, and Howe's vast and vital oeuvre (he wrote insightfully and boldly about socialism, Yiddish literature, Faulkner, Hardy, T. E. Lawrence, and, in his most famous book, World of Our Fathers [1976], the immigrant Jewish experience) and extensive documentation of his 40-year term as editor of the journal Dissent provide a wealth of compelling material. Sorin's deep understanding of Howe's belief in intelligent public discourse, "staunch and consistent defense of civil liberties," seminal perception of secular Jewishness as a commitment to social justice, and deep reverence for literature enables him not only to portray a great intellectual but also to encapsulate a key era in American politics and critical thought and explicate the role "passionate dissent" plays in a healthy democracy. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

ANNOTATION

A New York Times "Books for Summer Reading" selection.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"By the time he died in 1993 at the age of seventy-three, Irving Howe was one of the twentieth century's most important public thinkers. Deeply passionate, committed to social reform and secular Jewishness, ardently devoted to fiction and poetry, in love with baseball, music, and ballet, Howe wrote with such eloquence and lived with such conviction that his extraordinary work is now part of the canon of American social thought." In the first comprehensive biography of Howe's life, historian Gerald Sorin brings us close to this man who rose from Jewish immigrant poverty of the 1930s to become one of the most provocative intellectuals of our time. Known most widely for his award-winning book World of Our Fathers, a rich portrayal of the East European Jewish experience in New York, Howe also won acclaim for his prodigious output of illuminating essays on American culture and as an indefatigable promoter of democratic socialism as can be seen in the pages of Dissent, the journal he edited for nearly forty years.

FROM THE CRITICS

New York Times Book Review

Sorin portrays Howe the tough political fighter alongside the brilliant writer and generous friend￯﾿ﾽSorin has built a solid portrait of the writer and critic￯﾿ﾽhe does a very good job of illuminating the relationship between politics and literature in Howe￯﾿ﾽs intellectual life, particularly the way in which his socialism was informed by his reading of Yiddish literature

The Los Angeles Times

Irving Howe was also, as Gerald Sorin tells us in his appropriately subtitled Irving Howe: A Life of Passionate Dissent, a lifelong socialist activist, a man for whom, as Howe often said, the socialist movement was his school and university. What Sorin has accomplished in this beautifully written, balanced and probing intellectual biography is the most complete picture we have of Howe, a portrait of how one Jewish intellectual and activist struggled daily to balance scholarship and politics and the life of the mind and a life of action. — Ronald Radosh

Booklist

Sorin skillfully captures the illuminating fire of Howe￯﾿ﾽs convictions, conflicts, and achievements. [His] deep understanding of Howe￯﾿ﾽs belief in intelligent public discourse￯﾿ﾽenables him not only to portray a great intellectual but also to encapsulate a key era in American politics.

Washington Post Book World

In this fine biography, Gerald Sorin show us why we need more Irving Howes today. Sorin traces the shifts and turns in a life that wound up creating one of America￯﾿ﾽs most thoughtful leftists￯﾿ﾽA complexity of political views, a tension-ridden intellectual life (rather than academic careerism), an ability to criticize while remaining humane￯﾿ﾽthese are things we need a lot more of today. For reminding us of this, we have not just Irving Howe but Gerald Sorin to thank.

Publishers Weekly