Commentary Magazine 1945-1959: 'A Journal of Significant Thought and Opinion'

by Nathan Abrams

Launched in 1945, Commentary magazine became one of America's most celebrated periodicals. Under the editorship of Elliot E. Cohen, it developed into the premier postwar journal of Jewish affairs attracting a readership far wider than its Jewish community origin. This book is the first detailed and critical study of Commentary magazine during its formative years. Abrams traces the development of the key issues that have occupied its first fifty the construction of a new American Jewish identity, Judaism, the Holocaust, the State of Israel, and the Cold War. This account of the chief and most influential journal of Jewish thought, opinion, and culture in America will complete the picture of postwar American Jewish and general intellectual life. It is based upon a wide range of sources including archival and other material never before published in the context of Commentary magazine.

201 pages, Paperback

First published December 30, 2006

About the author

Nathan Abrams is Professor in Film at Bangor University in Wales. He is founding co-editor of Jewish Film and New Media: An International Journal, as well as the author of The New Jew in Film: Exploring Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Cinema and Stanley Kubrick: New York Jewish Intellectual.