Running Commentary by Benjamin Balint

by Benjamin Balint

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 their magazine; the place where they and other politically sympathetic intellectuals -- Hannah Arendt, Saul Bellow, Lionel Trilling, Alfred Kazin, James Baldwin, Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick and many others -- shared new work, explored ideas, and argued with each other.Founded by the offspring of immigrants, Commentary began life as a voice for the marginalized and a feisty advocate for civil rights and economic justice. But just as American culture moved in its direction, it began -- inexplicably to some -- to veer right, becoming the voice of neoconservativism and defender of the powerful.This lively history, based on unprecedented access to the magazine's archives and dozens of original interviews, provocatively explains that shift while recreating the atmosphere of some of the most exciting decades in American intellectual life.

Genres: Politics, History

Hardcover

First published April 27, 2010

Reviews

[Lee Levine · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stunning level of research for a book that at first glance seemed marginally significant. Ultimately, the book proves both a spot-on survey of the changing dispositions of US decision-makers (and their intellectual godfathers) as well as the chronicle of an 80=year evolution from marginalized and leftist to mainstream and neoconservative.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a valuable book insofar as it explains how Commentary, the magazine of Jewish thought in America, changed from a magazine of the left into the home of Jewish neoconservatism, but it happens almost in a vacuum as it never explains that this political transit put it further and further away from the mainstream of American Jewish politics and thought. It's almost a story of how a small group of American Jewish writers deluded themselves into thinking they spoke for an important community, while the greater Jewish community paid less and less attention to them, at which the book hints more than a few times.

[Mari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Magazines r crazy

[The American Conservative]

'There has been some recent controversy over whether to describe neoconservatism as, in the main, a Jewish phenomenon. It was fueled by some neoconservatives who charged that critics of the Iraq War were using the term as a coded anti-Semitic slur. Eschewing such silliness, Balint situates the movement firmly in the stream of Jewish-American history.

That history was inseparable from Commentary, founded, housed, and supported by the American Jewish Committee for the purpose of providing “informed discussion on the basic issues of our time especially as they bear on the position and future of Jews in our country and in the world scene.”'

Read the full review, "Thought Leader," on our website:
http://www.theamericanconservative.co...

[Sam Schulman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great stuff on Neal Kozodoy - however I am not in the index.