Publisher description
By the time he died in 1993 at the age of 73, Irving Howe was one of the
20th 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 this comprehensive biography of Howe's life, historian Gerald Sorin
brings us close to the man who rose from Jewish immigrant poverty in 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 40 years. Deeply devoted to the ideal of democratic radicalism and true equality,
Howe was constantly engaged in a struggle for decency and basic fairness in the
face of social injustice. In the century of Auschwitz, the Gulag, and global
inter-ethnic mass murder, it was difficult to sustain political certainties and
take pride in one's humanity. To have lived a life of conviction and engagement
in that era was a notable achievement. Irving Howe lived such a life. In this comprehensive biography of Howe's life, historian Gerald Sorin
brings us close to the man who rose from Jewish immigrant poverty in the 1930s
to become one of the most provocative intellectuals of our time.
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Irving Howe: A Life of Passionate Dissent: A Life of Passionate Dissent
Book reviews » Irving Howe: A Life of Passionate Dissent: A Life of Passionate Dissent
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