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American Radical: The Life and Times of I. F. Stone
Popular Front columnist and New Deal propagandist. Fearless opponent of McCarthyism and feared scourge of official liars. Enterprising, independent reporter and avid amateur classicist. As D.D. Guttenplan puts it in his compelling book, I.F. Stone did what few in his profession could—he always thought for himself. America's most celebrated investigative journalist himself remains something of a mystery, however. Born Isidor Feinstein in Philadelphia, raised in rural New Jersey, by the age of 25 this college drop-out was already an influential newsman, and enjoying extraordinary access to key figures in New Deal Washington and the friendship of important artists in New York.
It is Guttenplan’s wisdom to see that the key to Stone’s achievements throughout his singular career—and not just in his celebrated I.F. Stone’s Weekly—lay in the force and passion of his political commitments. Stone’s calm, forensic, yet devastating reports on American politics and institutions sprang from a radical faith in the long-term prospects for American democracy.
His testimony on the legacy of American politics from the New Deal and World War II to the era of the civil rights struggles, the Vietnam War, and beyond amounts to as vivid a record of those times as we are likely to have. Guttenplan's lively, provocative book makes clear why so many of his pronouncements have acquired the force of prophecy.
- GenresBiography
612 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 26, 2009
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135 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
December 1, 2015
Great bio on Stone, but also a great introduction on the days of the 'fronts' in the thirties and their changing connections with American journalism and politics in general. The author does a great job displaying the stages fellow travelers went through in America. Naturally, the author keeps to the timeline of his main subject's life in describing left politics in America. The thirties became the golden age of leftist activism in America due to New Deal prominence, or should I say dominance, on the political scene. Disparate characters of all kinds on the left could be found playing nice. And Izzy was more often than not at the center of it all. The Pact of Steele ended recess, and ushered Stone into an adversarial position against the Soviet Union, but the left, while somewhat chastened by Stalin's realpolitik, still had a place to sup at the table of American politics; especially after Germany invaded Russia, to Stalin's acute dismay. After the war against fascism, America turned to the war against communism and everyone veering to the left feared detention. Even Stone, or at least his passport..... Stone's biography in the second half becomes a sad examination of an independent journalist struggling to find meaning when he's caught between two superpowers willing to lie, cheat, and kill to further their aims; or so Stone thought. Living in one, emotionally attached to the other created an interesting ambivalence which fueled Stone's emotive journalism. Stone reported less than interpreted the news In his Weekly. Obviously Stone preferred the pretensions of communist/socialist ideology over American democratic freedom, but the ending of the Prague Spring proved to him there was no safe ground where one could entirely enjoy one's political ideals In peace, or not on this earth anyway. Israel was probably as close as he would get in his search for truth in both theory and practice. At the end of his life he spent his time reading the Torah and Greek classics. Ending one's life breaking the Socrates story seems a maudlin finish for a journalist who had once intimidated the NSA to such a degree that they subscribed faithfully to the Stone Weekly too.....
February 18, 2012
I first read about "Izzy" sometime during the 1970s, where I'm not sure, perhaps in an article in The New York Review of Book. I found his left-wing but independent non-sectarianism to attractive. I think by the time I learned about him, he had stopped publishing investigative newsletter.
My impression of his work was that he was an investigative reporter, who unlike many of his peers, was largely an outsider who did not cultivate sources in government (or wherever he was covering at the time.) This biography reinforces that impression of his work in the 1950s and 1960s.
However, what I wasn't aware of was how connected he was earlier in his life when he was a newspaper reporter and editorial writer. He worked for several mainstream newspapers and appeared on Meet The Press and other programs. His career took a different path in the 1950s, when after losing his passport and being the target of an FBI investigation, he decided to start his newsletter.
This book is more than just a story about one independent journalist. It also describes the period and provides a good context of his time (Thus I supposed the title Life and Times of I.F. Stone.)
On a more personal note, I enjoyed reading about his childhood in Philadelphia, where I lived for five years and Haddonfield, NJ, where I have stayed with friends a few times.
My impression of his work was that he was an investigative reporter, who unlike many of his peers, was largely an outsider who did not cultivate sources in government (or wherever he was covering at the time.) This biography reinforces that impression of his work in the 1950s and 1960s.
However, what I wasn't aware of was how connected he was earlier in his life when he was a newspaper reporter and editorial writer. He worked for several mainstream newspapers and appeared on Meet The Press and other programs. His career took a different path in the 1950s, when after losing his passport and being the target of an FBI investigation, he decided to start his newsletter.
This book is more than just a story about one independent journalist. It also describes the period and provides a good context of his time (Thus I supposed the title Life and Times of I.F. Stone.)
On a more personal note, I enjoyed reading about his childhood in Philadelphia, where I lived for five years and Haddonfield, NJ, where I have stayed with friends a few times.
May 26, 2012
My copy of American Radical: The Life and Times of I. F. Stone predates the edition with the Julian Assange introduction, and I can see how the face of Wikileaks would want to match his profile with Izzy Stone's. As valuable as Assange's information dumps and video drops may be in the battle for government and corporate transparency, they so far have fallen short of the results obtained by The I. F. Stone Weekly, a four-page DIY newsletter issued from the kitchen table of Stone and his wife, Esther, from 1953 through 1971. The scope of D. D. Guttenplan's biography encompasses Stone's entire career, an epic newspaperman tenure that ran neck-in-neck with the most divisive, cataclysmic and liberating events in modern American and global history. From the engineering of FDR's New Deal to the birth of Israel to the fall of Saigon, Stone supplied that curious and conscientious portion of the public necessary to an informed electorate with both hidden facts and pertinent context, which is where—-for all their cyber advantages--the digital information revolutionaries are trumped by four pages of printed text from a myopic, deaf solo practitioner of telling truth to power.
September 24, 2009
An utterly fascinating life-and-times biography of the leftist curmudgeon and journalist. Guttenplan explicitly rejects the thrust of other recent biographies that have attempted to minimize Stone's politics, and he decimates the claim that Stone was some kind of Soviet agent. The book's review of the Popular Front in the 1930s is sympathetic and illuminating. Stone never abandoned his socialist inclinations, but was intellectually honest enough to give up the left's infatuation with the Soviet Union after the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact in 1939.
May 23, 2011
3.75 Stars
If you're expecting to get any insights into Izzy Stone as a person (husband, father, son, brother or friend), this isn't the book. It mostly follows his career and the times in which he became the infamous radical journalist. It's more interesting for the events that shaped America and I.F. Stone than as a portrait of the man, but still a good read.
If you're expecting to get any insights into Izzy Stone as a person (husband, father, son, brother or friend), this isn't the book. It mostly follows his career and the times in which he became the infamous radical journalist. It's more interesting for the events that shaped America and I.F. Stone than as a portrait of the man, but still a good read.
May 22, 2011
I didn’t know much about I.F. Stone, the leftwing journalist, until I read this biography. It left me an appreciation for his commitment and intellectual honesty over decades of tumultuous times that broke many others.
June 5, 2012
I came to I.F. Stone's Weekly in college in the 60s. To a young and naive kid, the information it contained was eye-opening. The story of Izzy's life has its eye-opening moments as well. Sometimes a slog but worth it.
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April 4, 2014I.F. Stone has always been one of my personal heroes. Good review of this bio at http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/...
October 2, 2012
I have an older copy of this book, without the Assange intro.
January 12, 2013
An exhaustive look at a great independent journalist and great spirit. Worth wading into.
August 23, 2014
Excellent. Plenty of information about the labor movement, socialism, freedom of the press.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews