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Post-Military Society: Militarism, Demilitarization, and War at the End of the Twentieth Century
A Marriage of Convenience: New Zionist Organization and the Polish Government, 1936-1939 (East European Monographs)
The Hungarian Parliament, 1867-1918: A Mirage of Power (East European Monographs)
Romania in World War II, 1939-1945 (East European Monographs)
Hungarian Jews During the Holocaust and After the Second World War, 1939-1949: A Statistical Review (East European Monographs)
The Macedonian Question: Cultural, Historiography, Politics (East European Monographs)
On All Fronts: Czechoslovaks in World War II (East European Monographs)
Nationalism and Historiography: The Case of Nineteenth-century Lithuanian Historicism (East European Monographs)
Remembering a Forgotten War: Civil War in Eastern European Russia and Siberia, 1918-1920 (East European Monographs)
A Little History of Ireland
Tearing Down Prague's Jewish Town: Ghetto-Clearance and the Legacy of Middle-Class Ethnic Politics Around 1900 (EEM)
The Blue Shirts: Portuguese Fascism in Interwar Europe (Social Science Monographs)
The Secret History of British Intelligence
The Last Parallel: A Marine's War Journal
Arms & Armaments of Civil War
The Spirit of Christmas: A History of Our Best-Loved Carols
The Legacy of St. Vladimir: Byzantium, Russia, America
King Philip's War: The History and Legacy of America's Forgotten Conflict
The Conquest of the North Atlantic
15, 000+ Baby Names
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Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left and the Leftover Left

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History of the Left in America
A whirlwind tour through the old left.
He Had the Courage To Confront the Lies and Seek the Truth
"Anticommunism was the moral equivalency of rape"
TROUBLE WITH THE TIMING

Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left and the Leftover Left
Ronald Radosh
Manufacturer: Encounter Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1893554058

Amazon.com

Ronald Radosh, the scholar who is probably most responsible for showing that Julius Rosenberg was indeed a spy for the Soviet Union, offers this honest memoir of growing up a red-diaper baby in New York and, many years later, falling out of favor with his fellow travelers. Born into a family that was both Jewish and Communist, Radosh spent much of his life orbiting these worlds (especially the latter) as an activist for all sorts of left-wing causes. The FBI even began keeping a file on him.

There's a certain amount of score settling on these pages, much of it amusing. What makes Commies fascinating, however, is Radosh's virtual banishment from left-wing politics for publishing The Rosenberg File, a book that definitively showed Julius Rosenberg was not the innocent martyr of liberal mythology but a traitor to his country. Radosh actually started the book believing he could vindicate Rosenberg; through the course of his research, however, he concluded the man was guilty, and set about saying so. This was too much for many of his friends, who soon refused to be seen with him in public. Here is a man who viewed the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 as very possibly a portent of "extreme reaction, if not fascism," suddenly blacklisted by the Left. He became disenchanted with how he had spent his life and "started to question the whole project of the Left." He even suffered professionally: in 1993, Radosh was denied a job in George Washington University's history department. "If I had still been a Communist writing left-wing history, I probably would have breezed in. But faculty members practicing a politically correct version of McCarthyism blackballed me."

Radosh is not a left-winger who has become a right-winger, like David Horowitz, but he is clearly a person who has had second thoughts about what he once believed. America, he writes, is "a country where I was born but didn't fully discover until middle age." Commies is a valuable document describing radicalism in the 1950s and 1960s from the inside. --John J. Miller

Book Description

Commies is a brilliant memoir of growing up in the culture of radicalism. But it also about the hard decisions faced by those professing a radical faith. For Radosh himself, the crisis came when he concluded in his authoritative book on Julius and Ethel Rosenberg that the couple (in whose behalf he had demonstrated as a boy) had indeed been guilty of spying. Attacked as a traitor, Radosh began to question his political commitments. His disillusionment climaxed in the 1980s when he traveled through Central America as a journalist and historian and ran into his old comrades there still searching for the revolution.

Customer Reviews:

History of the Left in America.......2006-10-29

This book is both an autobiography and a history of Leftist ideology in America. It is a history that Ronald Radosh knows well, having grown up during its origins as a "Red-diaper baby" and subsequently lived most of his life under its influence. The book traces the evolution of the Marxist inspired ideas of an egalitarian utopian movement in the U.S. from the early 1900's, to the present - as seen through the author's eyes and experiences.

Radosh's memoirs read like a Who's Who of leftist thinkers and personalities. It is fascinating to read of his associations with such people as Pete Seegar, Paul Robeson, W.E.B Dubois, William Appleman Williams, Bob Dylan. Robert Scheer, and a host of others. Over the years Radosh has hung out with just about everyone that has been associated with the Left in America, whether as a major or minor figure.

Radosh's break with communist utopian ideology did not occur all at once. It was at times a gradual disillusionment, then at times a more abrupt shock to his senses. For instance in 1956 when Krushchev revealed the crimes of Stalin and in the same year Soviet tanks rolled into Hungary he was deeply disturbed. But he remained true to what he believed was the hope for a better world, and joined the Communist Party U.S.A. as a full-fledged member.

Then came the "New Left" of the 60's. The Old Left ideas were being refurbished by historians such as Williams, who argued that the economy of America was a managerial form of predatory democratic capitalism. There was an invisible totalitarianism that acted through America's corporate and civic structure to mold thought and stifle dissent. The Old Left name "Communism" became "Democratic Socialism" for the New Left.

Radosh went along with this, and was influenced by such New Left luminaries as Michael Harrington, Irving Howe and James Weinstein. Then in the 70's Radosh stayed for over a month in Cuba. This was an eye-opener. He observed first hand that the "workers" labored under unsafe and unhealthy conditions, the psychiatric hospitals were giving lobotomies and homosexuals were jailed. Radosh states: "...the net effect was to make me start rethinking my most fervently held assumptions."

The greatest shock to his Marxist utopian ideals came in the late 70's and early 80's when Radosh was researching for an article he was writing. His intention was to once and for all exculpate Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who had been executed in 1953 for being Soviet spies. New information had been made available from the release of Soviet files and from Kruschev's diaries.

After an extensive study of the old and the new material Radosh came away from his project convinced that the Rosenberg's were not innocent, but guilty. He tried to get this information published in left leaning journals and magazines such as In These Times, The Nation and The New Republic, but was turned away. When he approached Michael Harrington and Irving Howe, the two leading socialist thinkers and writers in America, he was told basically to just let the matter drop and to forget about it. His article eventually grew into a book, "the Rosenberg File: A Search for the Truth" published in 1983.

Not yet completely deconverted Radosh tried to "rekindle his faith" (his words) by getting involved in the civil war in El Salvador to research a possible book. What he found were simple peasants who had their land taken from them by revolutionaries who had postured as their saviors, only to become their masters. When the charismatic "savior" Daniel Ortega was defeated in a democratic election, Radosh wrote: "The Nicaraguan election ended the prospects for revolution in Central America. It also ended my long exile from America."

In his closing chapter Radosh notes how Left ideas have morphed over the years, and that now the Leftover Left is busy with such causes as ultra-environmentalism, pro-Arabism, political correctness, and deconstructionist "Dada". "Today's left has no Soviet Union as a beacon, but its reflexive hatred of the American system is still intact." Radosh states that in 1990 he ended his own long exile from America. He looks back at his old "comrades" and is certain that some of them still live in their illusions and dream secretly of a revolution. As Arthur Koestler defined them, they are "clinging to the last shred of the torn illusion " with the "typical intellectual cowardice that prevails on the left."

A whirlwind tour through the old left........2005-07-14

Radosh was a red-diaper baby who seems to have met everyone of importance in the old left. Pete Seeger sang for his summer camp. Mary Travers was the class slut.

He also brushed against every political and social fad of the left as well. His first wife, deep into feminist retoric, cheats on him. Remember "smash monogamy"? Shrinks who shared LSD with their patients, communes, Lyndon LaRouche, and visits to Cuba, it's all here.

One very telling detail is a chat he has with Tom Hayden. It's 1989, communism has fallen, and Tom and his wife, Jane Fonda, have just visited Prague to "start building a new left".

Radosh, who by this time has drifted far from his red-diaper early beliefs, has to force himself not to ask Tom if he's out of his mind.

He Had the Courage To Confront the Lies and Seek the Truth.......2005-01-28

Ron Radosh was born and bred a "Red Diaper" baby.

Among his earliest heroes was his uncle, Irving Kreichman, whom the Jew-baiting Stalinst Communist Party of the United States had change his name to Irving Keith. Keith, or Kreichman, a "true believer" went off to Spain in the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, and was killed believing he died for the freedom of the Spanish Republic and fighting Hitler. Unfortunately for Keith, it was another Fascist like Schicklgruber, the pockmarked Georgian thug named Koba aka Stalin who sent just enough arms to ensure that the Spanish Republic died a lingering death just in time for him to break bread with Herr Hitler.

Despite this, Radosh was weaning on the Party tenets and dogma. His music teacher at the Communist Camp he attended was none other than Pete Seeger. And Bobby Zimmerman, aka Dylan, was another pupil there - Dylan would flirt with the Left but never join the Communists. The clown below who claimed that Radosh was never in the SDS - namely B. Apetheker was too busy swallowing CP dogma courtesy of "her" daddy to realize that Radosh was just as much a major part of the Left as this pathetic so-called "woman" ever was.

Radosh, unlike Bettina had the courage and moral integrity to take in the truth even after it had hit him squarely in the eyes. His epiphany came long after Soviet tanks blasted away the dreams of freedom for the Hungarian people, or even after Brezhnev pissed on the "Prague Spring". It came, ironically, while Radosh was researching the lives and misdeeds of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, hoping to clear their names but discovering instead that they were indeed Soviet spies and traitors who helped give Stalin the bomb.

Even after exposing the lies of deceit of the Rosenbergs, Radosh still remained steadfast to his own beliefs, even denouncing the election of Ronald Reagan as President of the United States in 1980. Then he went to Nicaragua to celebrate the Sandinista revolution and came back exposing the corruption and totalitarian nature of the Sandinista regime and its thug leadership. He paints a humourous picture of the former Mrs. Mick Jagger as a pathetic bimbo, ever willing to strip off her clothes in a hurry to be the sexual playtoy of one of the worst thugs and torturers of that regime, Tomas Borge. It was in Nicaragua, amidst the freedom fighters of the Contras - that Radosh finally had the guts to acknowledge the fraud that he had supported for most of his life.

Ron Radosh learned a lot and is still learning. Quite unlike the "daughter" of one of Stalin's worst apologist who was also a self-loather. Irving Keith was a hero - a sadly misguided one as things turned out. The same cannot be said for H. Apetheker.

"Anticommunism was the moral equivalency of rape".......2004-07-02

To quote Hayden's "Students for a Democratic Society". This is an excellent book about the Left's blindspot--either willfull or self-deluded--towards the atrocities of the Soviet Union and Communist movements in general. Radosh begins in the late 30s early 40s--when Leftist attacked FDR as a war-mongerer during the Nazi-Soviet pact--and ends w/ Bianca Jagger strutting around nude during the anti-Sandinista Nicuaraguan elections in the late 80s. The stories and anecdotes Radosh brings out are entertaining and in ways, frightening, because of the depth of the willful ignorance of Communist atrocities within the Leftist collective consciousness. Michael Lerner, Bob Scheer, Ed Asner...these people still walk around w/ a hefty amount of credibility to the crowds they play to. That's disturbing. Radosh also returns to the Rosenberg case, and shows how the Venona taps confirm the guilt of the Rosenbergs. He also tells of the Leftist reactions to this, either denial (like many reviewers below, many of which don't even address the consequences of the Venona "secrets") or worse, "The facts are irrelevant, we need the Rosenbergs as heroes".

I'm only giving it four stars, because I think that David Horowitz' Radical Son is a better overall biography (more personal and honest), and Horowitz explains the personal appeal of and rationale behind Leftism. Radosh's book is more of a summary of Leftist vomit, like the above quote from the SDS, but it's still an excellent book about one side of the political spectrum during the Cold War.

TROUBLE WITH THE TIMING.......2004-05-27

An admirable trait of our challenged species is that we suffer in silence a lot. And it's sad when a person once devoted to ameliorating this suffering concludes not that they've done their best and the job was too big, but that all along they were wrong. Possibly, it was Ronald Radosh's being brought up in bourgeois "red diapers" by loving parents that instilled a softer commitment to communist ideals than others' fiercer commitments, instilled differently.

If such a thing can be, Radosh's book "Commies" is kind of a (Whittaker Chambers') "Witness" lite. And thank god for that, because books of ex-newleft communists' expiations run to the superficial, egomaniacal and infantile stinky. The lite-er the better, I say. American flag-wavers will love this book. Many if not most others will find it superficial, egomaniacal and infantile stinky, as I did. But I give it one star for the lite.

Consider. Radosh writes on p151 of the "Commies" paperback edition I read, that since he was "a historian" when the government released the FBI's Rosenberg files, he figured he was "the perfect person to undertake a serious effort to examine them and write a book." But just two pages later he demonstrates an inattention to his own factual narrative that would embarrass an undergraduate history major. In the second paragraph on p153, Radosh writes that what "stunned" him reading the FBI files was that the bureau's prison informant (who presumably had talked only to Julius Rosenberg) confirmed a story previously told to Radosh by Jim Weinstein about how he (Weinstein) "had (driven) Julius...from Ithaca to New York." Further on in that very paragraph, however, Radosh elaborates on what the informant told the FBI and comments on it, "(the informant)...told the FBI (that a communist party recruit, Max Finestone) had borrowed (Jim Weinstein's car) to drive Julius to Ithaca.....This of course is precisely what Jim Weinstein had related to me." No, not even close to "precisely," Ronald Radosh. The drivers and the destinations differed in the two versions of the story.

The explanation for these inconsistencies is probably trivial especially if one believes the Rosenberg case itself was fairly trivial, beyond the personal tragedies involved. But in his book, Radosh makes a lot out of his Rosenberg case research as disenchanting him with the left in general. And his failure to even notice two glaring inconsistencies in one short paragraph in "Commies" - about what he says had stunned him in his Rosenberg case research -- reduces his claim to be "a historian" to plain silliness.

On the next-to-last page of the book, Radosh muses: "Our history should have been a cautionary tale, but as the causes of yesteryear collapsed, my old friends found it hard to reevaluate their experiences or acknowledge that they were wrong." Not true again, Ronald Radosh. And especially not true of the cause you say finally convinced you that left politics were wrong - the New Left's outrage at Ronald Reagan's funding of the Contras in the Nicaraguan civil war, the most murderous and devastating war in the history of Central America, ultimately in secret and illegally with Iranian arms money. The New Left's opposition to Reagan's financing of the widespread and systematic murder and torture of non-combatant civilians by the Contras was wrong, in your opinion, because the Sandinistas were insensitive to personal freedoms in Nicaragua! How grotesque.

No, your old lefty friends were not wrong, Ronald Radosh. On the contrary, although as prone to overzealousness and impatience as to long and debilitating periods of quiescence, lefties have never been wrong. We've just always had trouble with the timing.

The Movements of the New Left, 1950-1975: A Brief History with Documents (The Bedford Series in History and Culture)

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a time when American society upturned itself

The Movements of the New Left, 1950-1975: A Brief History with Documents (The Bedford Series in History and Culture)
Van Gosse
Manufacturer: Bedford/St. Martin's
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Era of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933-1945: A Brief History with Documents (The Bedford Series in History and Culture)
Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism: A Brief Biography with Documents (The Bedford Series in History and Culture)
Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and the Civil Rights Struggle of the 1950s and 1960s: A Brief History with Documents (The Bedford Series in History and Culture)
Dear Sisters
The Sixties

ASIN: 0312133979

Book Description

The Movements of the New Left is a documentary history of the movements for fundamental social change and radical democracy that disrupted the United States from their emergence in the 1950s through their dispersion and institutionalization in the early 1970s. Using an inclusive definition of the New Left, Gosse tracks the development and commonalities of the civil rights and black power movements and other struggles of people of color, of the peace, antiwar, and student movements, and of feminism and gay liberation. The introduction presents a solid overview of the history of these movements, combining chronological and thematic approaches against the backdrop of Cold War liberalism. Forty-five documents follow, each with an informative headnote providing context and explanatory footnotes that help students make sense of manifestoes, testimonies, speeches, newspaper advertisements, letters, and book excerpts from the tumultuous era referred to as “the Sixties.” A chronology of the New Left, questions for consideration, a selected bibliography, and an index provide further pedagogical support.

Customer Reviews:

a time when American society upturned itself.......2007-02-03

These were the years when American society upturned itself. From the civil rights of Negroes to those of women and of homosexuals. The book has many short excerpts of historically significant speeches and essays. One is by Martin Luther King Jr, "Letter From Birmingham Jail", describing Freedom Riders and other activists attempting to end segregation in Alabama. Another essay is several pages from the Civil Rights Act of 1964. A pivotal piece of legislation.

Betty Friedan is also represented here, with several pages from her "Feminine Mystique". Here is a cogent argument that women could and indeed should pursue their own careers, outside of the home.

These and other essays serve as benchmarks of when radical but largely peaceful events profoundly altered the social fabric.

The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground (Haymarket Series)

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Those Wacky Leftists
A rehash of old sources; unanalytical
Fast and loose with the facts
A great book---if placed in the right context
A Whitewash...

The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground (Haymarket Series)
Ron Jacobs
Manufacturer: Verso
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies
Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground And the Politics of Solidarity
SDS/WUO, Students For A Democratic Society And The Weather Underground Organization
Sing a Battle Song: The Revolutionary Poetry, Statements, And Communiques of the Weather Underground 1970 - 1974
Weathermen

ASIN: 1859841678

Amazon.com

The Weather Underground was a small band of no more than a few hundred radicals, yet the fringe group was widely feared and revered as notorious bombers and violent revolutionaries. In The Way the Wind Blew Ron Jacobs presents a history of the group, from its origins on college campuses to the surrender of its last fugitive members in the 1980s. Along the way they set off bombs (...) and issued communiqués that were largely irrelevant if not incomprehensible to the American public. The dispassionate tone of this book allows for a credible narrative history of the group and its most prominent members, but many questions about the group's motivations remain unanswered.

Book Description

"You don't need a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows." -- Bob Dylan

A gripping account of 1960s radicals who took up arms against the state. The arrest and subsequent imprisonment of Silas Bissell, former heir to the rug-cleaning fortune who was discovered living near Eugene, Oregon, in 1987, drew a line under one of the most spectacular and bizarre episodes in the historv of the American New Left, for it marked the official end of the Weathermen. Product of splits within the antiwar movement during the late 1960s, the Weather Underground would become synonymous with violent, clandestine resistance to racism and imperialism in the United States and, for some, a symptom of how the movement went wrong. In the first comprehensive history of the Weathermen, Ron Jacobs narrates the origins, development and ultimate demise of the organization: its emergence from the Students for a Democratic Society; its role in the famous Days of Rage in Chicago during October 1969; its decision to go underground; the various actions it staged -- and in some cases bungled -- during the 1970s; its role as goad to other left organizations to sustain the struggle against racism and imperialism; and finally its disintegration, as various members were either captured or surrendered. Drawing on a rich array of documents, interviews with participants and an unrivalled knowledge of the history of the New Left, Jacobs weaves a gripping tale, by turns inspiring and hair-raising -- a fitting testimony to the serried adventures of Weatherman itself. The Way the Wind Blew fuses the excitement of a thriller with an objective assessment of US 1960s radicalism. It is an indispensable resource for comprehending the recent history of the US left.

Customer Reviews:

Those Wacky Leftists.......2002-03-18

This short book attempts to outline the rise and fall of the Weatherman Organization. Weather, as it came to be known, was an offshoot of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). When the SDS fragmented in the late 1960's, Weather became its best known survivor. Weather quickly went "underground" and engaged in a series of bombings that stretched well into the 1970's. Probably the most recognizable event in the history of Weather was the explosion that occurred in a townhouse in New York in 1970, when three members died while constructing bombs. The group bombed the United States Capitol building, banks, police stations and other "symbols" of what they deemed the imperialist-capitalist system. Most members of the Weather group eventually were arrested and sentenced to prison (unfortunately brief) terms. The last action concerning Weather was an armored car robbery in 1981 in New York.

Ron Jacobs, the author of this book, really could have done a better job. For one thing, he sympathizes too much with his topic. This causes serious problems with his objectivity and taints the book. His research is lacking as well. He relies exclusively on news clippings and documents. I believe I saw only one citation concerning an interview with a figure involved in the actual events. Errors abound as well, mostly concerning editing problems that should have been rectified before reaching publication. The book resembles a laundry list of events more than a historical narrative. In short, Jacobs takes a subject that has the potential for interest and turns it into cerebral novacaine. I'd like to see a more serious treatment of this topic, preferably written by a professional historian.

There is still some value to be found here, however. Even a car wreck of a book can't hide the fact that Weather was made up of serious wackos. The conflicts within Weather about the direction the group should take would be hilarious if it wasn't so dangerous. All the talk about revolution and women's roles in the group become ridiculous when you remember that we are talking about an organization made up of at most a few hundred people. Actually, I hesitate to call Weather an organization because hierarchy was seen as a symptom of the "imperialist pig" system. I also have problems with using the term "underground" in referring to Weather. Most of the group lived openly, albeit under assumed identities, for years. Bernardine Dohrn, who praised the Manson killings and wrote most of the Weather invective, lived with hubby Billy Ayers in New York. They raised children and worked jobs like any other people. When I think of underground, I think of hiding out and moving from safe house to safe house. This definitely didn't happen here. It's unimaginable that members of the Order, a neo-Nazi insurrectionist group active in the 1980's, would have lived the comfortable life many Weather members enjoyed while on the run. Unfortunately, instead of rotting away in prison, most of the former Weather members lead comfy lives today. Billy Ayers is a university professor at UI in Chicago (parents, remember this when looking for schools for your kids) and wife Bernardine works at a legal foundation. Since we can't seem to throw these people in prison, I think the best thing to do is constantly throw light on them and never forget what they did. Marginalize them as much as possible.

A rehash of old sources; unanalytical.......2002-03-18

Many of the issues discussed are framed in a rather negative and unanalytical context. While I agree that mistakes were made and lots of weird things happened, the author's recounting does little to help one figure out why things happened the way they did, in the context of the times.

1. The book contains a litany of weird things done by the Weather Underground, with very little effort at understanding or explanation, or attempt to place in context. I don't think there are easy answers for what happened and what went wrong, but what I would like to see in a study is something that helps one understand. What we have here is not much more than a review of old newspaper stories and some books. Much more primary material is needed, namely, frank interviews with people who were there. That's not easy, because the people are dispersed and not necessarily anxious to talk. But the book fails without some serious first-hand views. And it should be noted that not everything published at the time, by Weather or others, was necessarily reliable or accurate.

2. The author uses a lot of the rhetoric and slogans of the era without definition or explanation. Examples: fascism, imperialism, nationalist (page 3); black colony (page 27); ultra-leftism (page 146).

3. I don't agree that the original Weatherman paper did "little else" than define the role of black people in the U.S. (page 27).

4. I thought the reference to the Weather sign about GE workers (page 75) was peculiar. Perhaps it's accurate, perhaps it's not. To the extent it represents an actual syndrome, more supporting material would be helpful.

5. There are many glaring misspellings and errors of fact. Examples:

Pages 4, 6: Fairmont Hotel misspelled.

Page 5: Herbert Marcuse was at San Diego, not San Jose.

Page 7: Terry Robbins was from Ohio (as noted on page 100), not Michigan.

Page 23: Dean Rusk misspelled (note 4).

Page 62: Richard Elrod was not a corporate attorney; he was a city attorney, as noted on the next page. The story of what happened to Elrod is an interesting one, but the book doesn't really have it.

Page 84: The date of the War Council is wrong in the last paragraph; it was at the end of December, 1969.

Page 114: The lawyer's name is incorrect.

Page 116: First paragraph, incorrect name of Tom C. Huston.

Page 135: Leslie Bacon was called as a grand jury witness but I don't think she was charged with the Capitol bombing.

Page 137: The Georgia Straight was not an Atlanta newspaper; it was from Vancouver, B.C.

Page 146: Van Lydegraf was in his fifties, not his sixties. I'm not certain that he was expelled from either the CP or PL. He may have quit.

Pages 174-178: This section has numerous errors of fact and interpretation regarding PFOC.

Page 175: Mark Perry misspelled.

Page 179, top paragraph: The use of the passive voice here is not responsible. Who suggested this?

Page 180: Grace Fortner was not the name of the "woman originally identified as Esther."

Page 186: PFOC did not exist in Seattle in 1990-91.

All of these errors, and many more not mentioned, demonstrate two things: the author was not really familiar with the subject, and the book was poorly edited.
--Roger Lippman

Fast and loose with the facts.......2001-08-29

Useful for the bibliography and notes, but little else. Chock-full of inaccuracies and questionable interpretation, as Mr. Lippman pointed out below. A few examples: "[Bill Ayers] met Diana Oughton later that school year [1965], and together they began working at the Children's Community School." (p. 203). Ayers' "Fugitive Days": "In my second year at the Children's Community, Diana Oughton...arrived to volunteer at our school." (p. 91). The cover photograph of Bernardine Dohrn and Brian Flanagan is reversed from its printing on p. 63. When easily verifiable factual errors are made, one must question statements of a more interpretive nature. Marcuse is "a controversial Marxist philosopher and professor at San Jose State" (p. 5). This is a less than useful description of "One Dimensional Man"'s author, and contributes nothing to our understanding of his place in the intellectual climate of the time. I think most telling are Jacobs' acknowledgements. He thanks library staff for their help in helping him assemble material, throws off an "[A]lso, acknowledgements are extended to Roger Lippman, ... as well as various activists whose insights and conversation helped to shape my approach to this book." Jacobs then thanks his housemates, put on a par with ex-Weatherpeople. Jacobs is offering his less than well informed review of already published material. There is no indication he went to any effort to discuss the Weather Underground with the major actors he writes about. This might be a worthy masters thesis at a second-rate college, but is not the sort of thing you would get from a professional historian.

A great book---if placed in the right context.......2000-10-27

Jacobs, certainly with a leftist perspective, attempts to explain the motives of the Weather Underground. Classify them as terrorists or glorify them as heroes, but either way, they made an undisputable mark on history if one is willing to take the time to write reviews characterizing them as both. The fact is that in 200 pages, one can not clearly express what the Weather Organization did, why, and when those actions occured and why that timing was deemed necessary. In spite of that, Jacobs gives a great framework, regardless of your perspectives on the movement, for a cursory survey. In that context, this is perhaps the best book on the movement. If you are seriously researching the movement, this is great background, but in 200 pages, you'll never get the whole story.

A Whitewash..........2000-09-19

The weathermen were TERRORISTS, just as if they had blown up planes or taken over an Embassy. Actually, they were expodentially worse, since they were Americans killing Americans. I'd be very interested to hear the feelings of a reader who LOST A FAMILY MEMBER because of these psychotic, spolied little children, as I did. My father died at the hands of the weathermen, and I'm sorry that Boudin and her friend escaped their own bomb. I hope they're slapping each other on the back IN HELL.

Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground And the Politics of Solidarity

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an accesible account of the weather underground
Solid without being absurdly detailed
Volunteers of America: The Politics of the Weather Underground
Dan Berger's *Outlaws*

Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground And the Politics of Solidarity
Dan Berger
Manufacturer: AK Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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SDS/WUO, Students For A Democratic Society And The Weather Underground Organization
Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies
Sing a Battle Song: The Revolutionary Poetry, Statements, And Communiques of the Weather Underground 1970 - 1974
The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground (Haymarket Series)
Letters from Young Activists: Today's Rebels Speak Out (Nation Books)

ASIN: 1904859410

Book Description

"Dan Berger represents an emerging generation of radical activist scholars. A meticulously researched and well-referenced study of the Weather Underground. . . . A gripping story, drawing important lessons for the younger generation of activists."-Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years, 1960â€“1975

Outlaws of America brings to life the motivations and actions of America's most famous renegades, who bombed their way into history. Through detailed and original research, Dan Berger offers a nuanced and compelling portrait of the group that risked everything in opposition to war and racism.

This explosive, engaging, and timely book uncovers the untold story of the Weather Underground, from its incendiary beginning to its tumultuous ending-never sparing a critical analysis of the group. Especially noteworthy is Berger's groundbreaking discussion of the infamous 1981 Brinks case, where former Weather Underground members allied with the Black Liberation Army in a failed robbery that resulted in the deaths of three men and the longtime incarceration of several activists.

Outlaws of America is culled from dozens of in-depth interviews with former Weather Underground members, as well as with civil rights activists, Black Panthers, Young Lords, and others-many of whom speak about their experiences publicly here for the first time. The book also features an extensive appendix including Weather Underground communiques, a chronology of actions, a collection of rare photographs, and current biographical sketches of many ex-Weather Underground members.

Outlaws of America is published at a time of surging interest in the history of the group, immediately following the release of the Oscar-nominated documentary entitled The Weather Underground, of which Outlaws is the essential companion volume.

Dan Berger is a writer, activist, and PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. A longtime anti-racism organizer, he is the co-editor of Letters From Young Activists (Nation Books, 2005).

Customer Reviews:

an accesible account of the weather underground.......2007-02-03

a fascinating recounting of one of the more exciting, fresh, and daring movements of individuals known as the weather underground. This book recounts the early history, motivations, and background of social struggle taking place during this period of social struggle.

Particularly interesting was the authors discussion of racism and the role it played (and plays) in American society. As well as the very deep analytical attention towards class and priviledge and the role it plays in a class seperated society.

The individuals in this story are real with all their strengths and weaknesses intact. The author leaves us, the reader, to make our own conclusions about what the movement known as the Weather Underground means to our current reality.

Solid without being absurdly detailed.......2006-12-21

This was a thorough history, drawing on a number of sources and directions; but Berger keeps it rather readable. Casual? No. But approachable. Scholarly? Yes. But not egg-headed. It furnishes the reader with an overarching historical narrative, as well as dipping back and forth with another, contemporary narrative involving the interviews and friendship between a former Weatherman and the author. Few of my questions are left hanging by the text, with one particular exception: I would very much have had an appendix reproducing the texts of the WUO communiques and published works. Berger refers heavily and excerpts some, as I recall, but I would very much liked to have been able to flip to the back and read a whole communique.

This is an engaging read that manages to strip back propaganda from both sides of the line and tells the story both in the WUO's own words and through the mouth of an historian.

Volunteers of America: The Politics of the Weather Underground.......2006-03-20

The Politics of the Weather Underground
Volunteers of America
By RON JACOBS

In 1997 Verso published my history of the Weather Underground, The Way the Wind Blew: a History of the Weather Underground. Weather Underground member Bill Ayers' memoir Fugitive Days, published by Beacon Press in 2001, followed. Two years later, the film The Weather Underground, directed by Sam Green and Bill Siegel, was released. The film probably received the greatest amount of coverage in the mainstream media, although the unfortunate timing of Weather Underground member Bill Ayers' memoir (September 11, 2001) certainly provided his book with its own share, most of it negative.

There have also been novels written where the WUO figured prominently (most notably The Company You Keep by Neil Gordon Viking 2003), a pamphlet written by political prisoner David Gilbert (SDS/WUO, Students For A Democratic Society And The Weather Underground Organization, Arm the Spirit 2002) and the comparative study of the Weather Underground and the German leftist armed organization, the Red Army Fraction, by Jeremy Varon (Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies; UC Press 2004).

AK Press of Oakland, California is adding another book to this growing library of Weather Underground literature. The book, titled Outlaws of America and written by up-and-coming radical author Dan Berger, is an important complement to the earlier works. The first history of the Weather Underground Organization(WUO) to be written by someone whose age parallels the ages of the children of WUO members and many other "sixties" activists (Berger is 24), this well-researched and detailed work provides a perspective on the most well-known group in the militant wing of the anti-racist and antiwar movement. The book is essential to understanding the history of the 1960s, as well as the present movements against racism and imperialist war.

Two things make this book different than the one I got published 8 years ago. The first, and probably the greatest, is that Berger had access to the research and work that went into Green's film and my book. In addition, he also had much greater access to many of the personalities involved in the Weather organization. Green had a similar access. Things were a bit different when I was writing my book (1990-1997). Queries I sent to those members in prison were returned to me by prison officials, never having reached their intended recipient. Only a few individuals who had been in Weatherman/WUO were willing to talk with me and only two were willing to go on record. Others were willing to tell me if my story was accurate or not, but refused to discuss any specifics. One reason for this was the timing of my queries. After all, many Weather members were still unsure of their legal status and, politically, the US Left was still reeling from the effects of the incredibly reactionary Reagan era--a period that saw many members of the militant US left imprisoned and its infrastructure destroyed. In addition, hardly anyone that I approached knew my politics--which were a cross between the countercultural anarchism of the Yippies and the new communist movement of the 1970s. Berger and others have mentioned that my book helped to make it okay for WUO to be discussed as a force in US radical history. I was sent dozens of emails and letters from people telling me their stories as members of WUO or other militant groups after my book was published verifying this impression.

The other major difference between my work and Outlaws of America is that Berger writes from the perspective of today's generation of radical activists. (Indeed, Berger is co-editor of the recently released collection Letters From Young Activists.) His perspective is that of an anti-imperialist who came of age in the 1990s, not the 1960s and 1970s. This obviously provides a different perspective simply because the face of US imperialism has changed, with the end of the Soviet Union and its allies, and the rise of two worldwide movements against Western capitalism--the anti-global capitalism surge and the Islamic movement against the west. Both of these movements have varied strains and are only semi-consciously aware of the connections they share. Besides providing a different perspective on the WUO because of the difference in the historical situation, Berger's viewpoint is one that is not laden with the personality conflicts and ego battles that are part and parcel of every "Sixties" activist's recollection of the WUO. On top of that, Berger's historical distance means that he sometimes places his emphasis on words and actions that have more importance now than they did when they occurred. This tends to provide a more congruous history. At times, his words may seem too uncritical, but as another historian who was accused of the same thing, it is my belief that most of those who make this criticism are either fundamentally opposed to WUO's politics and analysis or are still stuck in a past that most Weather members have apologized for over and over.

Outlaws of America begins with a gripping description of Berger's first visit to Attica State Prison to interview/converse with former weather Underground member David Gilbert, who has been in the New York prison system since a conviction for his involvement in the tragic failure popularly known as the Nyack Brink's robbery. Berger obviously has a tremendous amount of respect for Gilbert's commitment while simultaneously understanding the tragedy of his position. In fact, each chapter begins with a quote from Gilbert--a technique that provides the reader with a glimpse of Berger's general perspective while never merely repeating Gilbert's take on things.

Much of the book's beginning is a general history of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the dissipation of that organization into Weatherman, Revolutionary Youth Movement 2, and SDS/Progressive Labor. Using an academically-trained critical eye, Berger analyzes key documents published in the SDS newspaper New Left Notes and explicates the role these writings had in the political development of Weather. His generational removal from the times allows for an analysis that accepts the fervent anti-racism and struggle against white privilege that would become Weather's theoretical backbone at face value. This is important to Berger's history. Once he establishes these elements as the basis for Weather's politics, Berger is able to provide the reader with a history of the Weatherman/Weather Underground Organization that would make its former members critically proud.

Given this, one might argue that while Outlaws of America might make former WUO members proud, it certainly couldn't be a good history if it accepts their political premise. After all, how could such a history be at all critical? To Berger's credit, it is the very fact that he uses the yardstick of Weather's essential political stance as the measure by which they should be judged that this history works as well as it does. It is apparent from his writing that his interviews with former members caused them to look at their actions and political words in relation to how well they measured up to their emotional and intellectual commitment to fighting racism, imperialism, and the white privilege these isms provide to white folks in the US.

As an activist who sees things differently than Weather did in terms of emphasis on fighting white privilege, I am more than willing to admit that it was their focus on this element of US society that made me aware of the phenomenon of white privilege and reminded me to fight it in myself and the larger world. On the other hand, my relationships with workers who also happened to be white led me to draw different conclusions about the way the phenomena of racism, white privilege, and economic exploitation interact in modern capitalist society. Of course, I was (and am) but one of hundreds of thousands pondering these questions. And they are important questions, to be sure.

Outlaws of America explores the final years of Weather in greater detail than its predecessors. In addition, Berger provides considerably more detail about the law enforcement activities arrayed against the WUO and its allies. This is one important part of the text where the element of time works in the author's favor. Not only is there more information regarding the law enforcement activities against the 1960s and 1970s popular leftist and anti-racist organizations, it is also much more accessible. This fact combined with Weather members willingness to discuss their years underground helps Berger flesh out the facts of State repression against the New Left, Black, Latino and Native American organizations, and especially the WUO. As regards the final years of Weather, the fact that many more former members feel safe in discussing the activities and politics of the group provided Berger with an opportunity to uncover the material. Of course, unless he asked the right questions, he would not have discovered what he did. Fortunately, Berger not only asked the right questions, he found enough former members willing to discuss their answers with him. Consequently, the reader is provided with the most complete explanation to date of how and why the Weather Underground Organization fell apart. Like every other aspect of its existence, the fundamental reasons were political. The stories and discussions in this section are instructive for today's movements as they struggle with questions of class, race, and gender.

Berger's best writing occurs when he weaves the modern-day reflections of former WUO members into his narrative text. He does this so skillfully that those reminiscences never come off sounding awkward or irrelevant. Sometimes these reflections merely add a bit of physical detail, while more often they provide a contextual insight into what these women and men were thinking while they lived and took political action underground. This is what makes this book different and useful to the historian, the "sixties" buff, and the political activist of today. These people lived the life of clandestine revolutionaries and this book proves that they made the choices they made because of their politics. It wasn't because of some guilt due to class privilege, nor was their choice related to some psychological occurrence of their childhood. Even more than the previous works about Weatherman/WUO, Outlaws of America brings it home, especially to the US reader, that people do make choices (life-changing choices) based on their politics. This in itself is revelatory in a culture that thinks politics begins with the Republicans and ends with the Democrats.

There's some criticism in these pages, too. To be sure, it's criticism from a left perspective, and that's a good thing. Those to the right of the US Left--and there are many--will read this book only under duress and rarely with an open mind. The reviews of the aforementioned works on the subject attest to that. Although I hope that Outlaws of America is read by people of all political persuasions, it's clear that it is intended for the growing left/anarchist movements of today and the New Left with its roots in yesterday. If those of us in that readership are to learn from history, it's very important that we critique that history. It's even better when that criticism comes from a variety of viewpoints. I hope this book, besides being an excellent read, sparks a new element in that conversation.

(Reviewer's note: March 6 marks the 36th anniversary of the deaths of Weathermembers Diana Oughton, Terry Robbins, and Ted Gold in the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion.)

Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs' essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's new collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625@charter.net

Dan Berger's *Outlaws*.......2005-12-15

Berger's history of the Weather Underground is meticulously researched, and his writing is straightforward and clear. Weatherman is portrayed in a compassionate but unromanticized light. This important book is a must-read for everyone with an interest in 20th century social justice movements.

Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain: History, the New Left, and the Origins of Cultural Studies (Post-Contemporary Interventions)

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Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain: History, the New Left, and the Origins of Cultural Studies (Post-Contemporary Interventions)
Dennis Dworkin , and Dennis Dworkin
Manufacturer: Duke University Press
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Binding: Paperback

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Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain (Youth Subcultures in Post-war Britain)

ASIN: 0822319144

Book Description

In this intellectual history of British cultural Marxism, Dennis Dworkin explores one of the most influential bodies of contemporary thought. Tracing its development from beginnings in postwar Britain, through its various transformations in the 1960s and 1970s, to the emergence of British cultural studies at Birmingham, and up to the advent of Thatcherism, Dworkin shows this history to be one of a coherent intellectual tradition, a tradition that represents an implicit and explicit theoretical effort to resolve the crisis of the postwar British Left.
Limited to neither a single discipline nor a particular intellectual figure, this book comprehensively views British cultural Marxism in terms of the dialogue between historians and the originators of cultural studies and in its relationship to the new left and feminist movements. From the contributions of Eric Hobsbawm, Christopher Hill, Rodney Hilton, Sheila Rowbotham, Catherine Hall, and E. P. Thompson to those of Perry Anderson, Barbara Taylor, Raymond Williams, Dick Hebdige, and Stuart Hall, Dworkin examines the debates over issues of culture and society, structure and agency, experience and ideology, and theory and practice. The rise, demise, and reorganization of journals such as The Reasoner, The New Reasoner, Universities and Left Review, New Left Review, Past and Present, are also part of the history told in this volume. In every instance, the focus of Dworkin’s attention is the intellectual work seen in its political context. Cultural Marxism in Postwar Britain captures the excitement and commitment that more than one generation of historians, literary critics, art historians, philosophers, and cultural theorists have felt about an unorthodox and critical tradition of Marxist theory.

Renewing the Left: Politics, Imagination, and the New York Intellectuals

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Renewing the Left: Politics, Imagination, and the New York Intellectuals
Harvey M. Teres
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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ASIN: 0195078020

Amazon.com

In this lively look at New York's radical culture from the 1930s to the 1960s, literary historian Teres hauls up the sort of arcana of which Woody Allen dialogs are made: in-jokes about Lionel Trilling and Norman Podhoretz, learned asides on Ezra Pound and Dwight MacDonald. Teres focuses on the founding of Partisan Review, a journal that, said editor Trilling, would forge "a new union between our political ideas and our imagination." Some of its leading exponents would drift rightward in politics during the Cold War, but Teres notes that the New York intellectuals were ahead of their time in realizing that it was possible to criticize Marxism without betraying the workers of the world.

Book Description

Teres examines literary radicalism among the New York intelligensia from the 1930s to the 1960s. Teres begins with the ideological underpinnings of the thirties, giving particular attention to the Partisan Review. He further discusses the major cultural battles of the forties and fifties, the failure to embrace postmodernism, and the problematic accommodation of women, African Americans and other marginal cultures.

The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968

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The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968
George Katsiaficas
Manufacturer: South End Press
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The Movements of the New Left, 1950-1975: A Brief History with Documents (The Bedford Series in History and Culture)
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ASIN: 089608227X

Book Description

"The Imagination of the New Left" brings to life the social movements and events of the 1960s that made it a period of world-historical importance: the Prague Spring; the student movements in Mexico, Japan, Sri Lanka, Italy, Yugoslavia, and Spain; the Test Offensive in Vietnam and guerilla movements in Latin America; the Democratic Convention in Chicago; the assassination of Martin Luther King; the near-revolution in France of May 1968; and the May 1970 student strike in the United States. Despite its apparent failure, the New Left represented a global transition to a newly defined cultural and political epoch, and its impact continues to be felt today.

The New Radicalism in America 1889-1963: The Intellectual As a Social Type

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The Roots of Cultural Criticism
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Worthy of another reading

The New Radicalism in America 1889-1963: The Intellectual As a Social Type
Christopher Lasch
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
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Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations
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Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged

ASIN: 0393316963

Book Description

Around the turn of the century, the American liberal tradition made a major shift away from politics. The new radicals were more interested in the reform of education, culture, and sexual mores. Through vivid biographies, Christopher Lasch chronicles these social reformers from Jane Addams, Mabel Dodge Luhan, and Lincoln Steffens to Norman Mailer and Dwight MacDonald.

Customer Reviews:

The Roots of Cultural Criticism.......2002-11-03

Lasch's "The New Radicalism in America," published in 1965 tells the history of radicalism in America through a series of portraits of well-chosen individuals. Some, such as Jane Addams and Walter Lippmann are still relatively well known, others such as Mabel Luhan Dodge, Lincoln Steffens, Colonel House, and Randolph Bourne as less well-remembered. Part of the appeal of this approach is the how Lasch positions and contrasts these leading and lesser lights within the context of the social and cultural movements they led, followed, or reported upon.

Lasch, the son-in-law of the liberal American historian Henry Commager, belonged to the post WWII generation of historians which searched for more objective ways to tell history than the progressive historians and writers such as Parrington and Croly, and the generation immediately afterwards, for example, Commager. Best known for his "The Culture of Narcissism," the "New Radicalism in America" is the work of a young historian attempting a critique of the grand, sweeping style of earlier generations, and to tell a story of a rise of a new class of personage on the public stage in America: the intellectual.

The intellectual in America rose out of the ashes of Victorianism. Its earliest avatars came from the bourgeoisie, appalled at the stifling, stunted one-dimensional roles assigned to their parents: the father as breadwinner, the predatory male who proved his fitness in the Spencerian business world, the mother who stayed home to create a haven in a heartless world for her husband and children, and who, as such was the arbiter of Victorian genteel culture and the inculcator of the social graces. For the daughters of the last generation of Victorians, such as Jane Addams and Mabel Dodge, the urge to strike through the pasteboard mask of the cult of Victorian womanhood was an almost physical necessity. Addams, observing a bullfight in Spain during a grand tour of Europe, was moved to finally act upon her sense of the emptiness of her position, and taking a cue from the early example of the settlement movement, went back Chicago and set up Hull House. Mabel Dodge, a banker's daughter from Buffalo, set up a salon in Greenwich Village and played the Grande dame to the era's intellectuals, socialists, union organizers, and writers. Going through husbands at a fairly rapid clip, she eventually moved to Taos, New Mexico and managed to get D.H. Lawrence and his wife to come to stay at her retreat. Narcissistic to the core, she embodies the free sexuality of the "new woman," who used the parlor as Victorians would never have used it: as a ring for clashing ideas.

Randolph Bourne, who frequented Dodge's salon along with cultural critics such as Waldo Frank, Van Wyck Brooks, John Dos Passos, and Walter Lippmann, wrote about the Young Americans who believed that they could create a new world starting with the new model of public education proposed by John Dewey. He eventually fell out with Dewey over WWI, refusing to accept Dewey's argument that the war was necessary to pave the way for the pragmatic administration of elites who would bring the world closer to a rational state. Bourne comes off here as a prototype of the 60s cultural critic -- rejecting earlier radical's accommodation to power in the Wilson administration.

These new radicals diverged from earlier American traditions of philosophy and religion which tended to either support those in power, or whose criticisms were expressed in the political arena. The post-Victorians attack on the moribund culture they were intended to inherit was truly new. We can see its reverberations today in the emphasis on the cultural critique as the preferred technique of today's post-modernists. These new radicals believed that by destroying the genteel tradition, by discovering and promoting native traditions or importing a more humanistic culture from Europe, they could throw a wrench into the dehumanizing dynamo of American industrialism and the debased high culture which served as the other pole of its debased dialectic.

These histories of intellectuals from the 1960s, such as "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life" by Richard Holfstadter, and "Men of Ideas" by Lewis Coser, are the histories of dead white men. They concentrate on telling of the growth of the intellectual class, their repeated induction into puissance and its gratifying perquisites, and their repulsion from power back to the margins. For a book that is now two generations removed from the fashionable currents of today, it remains remarkably fresh. Unlike so many writers of and on history now, who are so throttled by the theory and the malign influence of the first wave of post-modern critics that they do not dare write for a popular audience, Lasch writes to inform, to educate, and to provoke. Those whose retreat into academia a generation later and who generated a self-protective haze of obfuscation over their works, should consider ripping off that pasteboard mask (Melville), and forget their "knowingness." Write boldly. Attack directly. Remember that white males created the discourse in earlier times and that learning about those who rebelled against the narrowness the genteel tradition at the turn of the century in books such as this might actually be of some use in this post-modern era which cries out for political engagement. Read Randolph Bourne.

No longer of use.......1999-05-19

I see no reason for anyone to waste any time on this book or on Lasch. Those of us challenging contemporary paradigms have had to endure a lot of hypocritical criticism lately, and Lasch is really not so different from other clueless white males who used to refer to themselves as left before jumping ship and swimming to the right. The reason that the contemporary unviersity course of study in the humanities favors individual experience and expression is because white heterosexist patriarchy has denied us this expression in the past. It is the structuring of Difference that has finally received some attention, instead of the usual empty and dry western civ type of stuff. I am proud to be a radical interrogating paradigms and subverting other people's dearest assumptions. Who needs a tiresome white male like Lasch whining about how radicalism has departed from his narrow-minded "principles"?

Worthy of another reading.......1999-03-11

In light of the "cultural turn" in the human sciences which has so frazzled many of us who subscribed to the "old" distribution of intellectual labor in the university, Christopher Lasch's early study of the "left"--in many ways the book which began his lifelong engagement with issues pertinent to the proper and actual character of the Progressive cause--provides a new depth to what has so self-consciously flaunted its "newness," its "Post-whateverness." His thesis is that around the turn of the century the "radical" developed a new self-consciousness, and that this posture manifested itself in "cultural" radicalism whose politics was no longer confined to political economy, but which psychologized social issues and personal "artistic" experience. His biographical-vignette approach is especially effective at driving forward the themes, though it weakens his own argument--weak of the whole on what the ancients called "refutatio." I think his periodization is a little too cute and pat. The importance of 1963 is clear; 1889 is never satisfactorily developed and the reader must accept this date as if a revelation. This arbitrariness aside, Lasch has a keen descriptive eye--his dissections of Schlesinger and Mailer are particularly droll--and clean prose style throughout. For all its flaws, this book earns itself a hearty recommendation.

Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left After the Cold War

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Poor disenchanted Jorge!
Historiography of left movements and progressive program

Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left After the Cold War
Jorge Castaneda
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0679751416
Release Date: 1994-08-02

Book Description

Castro's Cuba is isolated; the guerrillas who once spread havoc through Uruguay and Argentina are dead, dispersed, or running for office as moderates. And in 1990, Nicaragua's Sandinistas were rejected at the polls by their own constituents. Are these symptoms of the fall of the Latin American left? Or are they merely temporary lulls in an ongoing revolution that may yet transform our hemisphere?

This perceptive and richly eventful study by one of Mexico's most distinguished political scientists tells the story behind the failed movements of the past thirty years while suggesting that the left has a continuing relevance in a continent that suffers from destitution and social inequality. Combining insider's accounts of intrigue and armed struggle with a clear-sighted analysis of the mechanisms of day-to-day power, Utopia Unarmed is an indispensable work of scholarship, reportage, and political prognosis.

Customer Reviews:

Poor disenchanted Jorge!.......2001-09-10

Or should I say poor Mr. Secretary! I read this book right after it was published as someone gave it to me as a gift. The book itself represents a turning point in Castañeda's life: from a progressive Mexican academician to a disenchanted US visiting professor. It is as if the ignominious Berlin Wall fell upon his head. The book transpires the "I was so wrong!" message from the beginning. However, I must admit that on the first part there is a lot of useful raw material that can help us understand the failure of armed movements in Latin America. Particularly accurate is the piece on Montoneros, the Argentine urban guerrilleros. However, it is Castañeda's analysis what is wrong. Then his proposal for the "left" (the "left" HE has in his own confused mind) proved wrong just some months after the publication of the book with the coming of the Zapatistas onto Mexican political arena. No wonder Catañeda's posterior attempts to discredit the movement: these irreverent Zapatistas were not following HIS proposal based on well-thought academic premises, conceived in a clean professor's office away from (social) reality. His current appointment as the Secretary of Foreign Relations in a right wing administration demonstrates clearly Castañeda's solid convictions that he had already gave off in this book.

Historiography of left movements and progressive program.......1997-07-04

This book was originaly written in 1992. An introduction added to account for important developments in 1994 that seem to contradict the main thesis. The book itself has 2 parts arifitially glued together. The first chapters present an excellent historiography of the last 60 years of left movements in Latin America. Parallels, connections and similarities are drawn between different groups in different times and places. All this is very informative, given the numerous references for further reading. One of the main arguments is that armed movements did not succeed in changing the politics of the region (except for a very small number of cases), that the transition to social-democracy activism is much more effective and that all of the democratically elected leftist governments failed to implement workable alternatives. The events in southern Mexico during January 94 contradict the general trend, hence the need for the new introduction. The last part of the book is programatic. Castaneda presents _the_ solution to the problems that plague the continent in the form of "recommendations" for the left (since the right will never do that). The program includes democratization, socially oriented government policies, regulated free-market, etc. As a whole the program is well presented and congruent. However, the apparent intent is to show how these policies are the only alternative based on the experience drawn from the first part of the book. On the last point I find the book lacking. The connection between the different historic cases and trens and the program for the future is not clear enough. Also, some internal contradictions are pointed out but not resolved (as to how the left will be elected with a corrupt polling process, etc)

Why the Left Hates America: Exposing the Lies That Have Obscured Our Nation's Greatness

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Why the Left doesn't want you to read this book!
Are Conservatives the Only True Patriots?
Hate Is Indeed The Right Word
Innoculate yourself against the hate of the left
a balanced review

Why the Left Hates America: Exposing the Lies That Have Obscured Our Nation's Greatness
Daniel J. Flynn
Manufacturer: Three Rivers Press
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The Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to American History (Politically Incorrect Guides)

ASIN: 1400080401
Release Date: 2004-09-21

Book Description

"The American flag stands for hatred, warmongering, and imperialism."
"Our free-market system is responsible for killing and oppressing millions of people."
"This country breeds racists and sexists."

Is America really that bad? It is if you accept the lies and propaganda from the anti-American Left in our own country. This dismal, distorted view of the greatest, freest nation in history comes from a Left who would rather idolize Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro than honor George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who burn down businesses and destroy property to protest free markets, and who fight alongside radical terrorists rather than against them. They trample the Constitution while hiding behind the First Amendment, and their idea of displaying the American flag is setting it on fire and parading it through the streets. Yes, this is a Left comprised of people who truly hate their country, and they will stop at nothing to tear her down—smashing our liberty in the process.

Why the Left Hates America punches a hole right through the thin veneer of political correctness that has long protected these anti-Americans—exposing their rotting, vacuous core. Author and commentator Daniel J. Flynn digs deep into the American Left and reveals why they blame every bad deed in the world on the United States, while ignoring her myriad contributions.

This book cogently points out that, of course, all Americans have the right to speak their minds. But, all too often, the actions by the anti-American Left become destructive and anarchistic. You need not look any further than the explosive 1999 World Trade Organization "protests" in Seattle, campus book burnings, or even John Walker Lindh to see that factions on the Left are the worst perpetrators of anti-Americanism. And what may be most shocking is that many of these anti-Americans are at the same time teachers, professors, journalists, news reporters, and even judges and politicians.

Probing and controversial—without devolving into jingoism—this book proves once and for all that what you see in the news and learn in school is often tainted by the anti-American Left, and it shows you what you can do to keep them at bay.

“A compelling, breezy look at the political myopia and downright kookiness that characterizes the radical Left...The book shines when Flynn catalogs the excesses of people who loathe everything the United States has ever touched...The final chapter, a catalog of what’s good about America, works even better.”—Weekly Standard

“Piece by piece, Flynn demolishes the underpinnings of the knee-jerk anti-American bias that makes so many thinking people cringe at the sight of their own nation’s flag.” —John McWhorter, author of Losing the Race

“A wonderful book documenting that with the collapse of the Soviet Union and socialism, the American Left is left alone with its one motivating idea: hatred of America.”—Grover Norquist, American Spectator

“An indispensable weapon in the battle for America’s future.”
—David Horowitz, author of Hating Whitey

“Read this book and learn how to take our country back, before it’s too late.”
—Tammy Bruce, author of The Death of Right and Wrong

“It is not so hard to understand why some foreigners hate America. Much more puzzling is why many on the American Left detest their country and work assiduously for its destruction. Dan Flynn exposes these America-haters and gives intellectual ammunition to thinking patriots.” —Dinesh D’Souza, author of What’s So Great About America

Customer Reviews:

Why the Left doesn't want you to read this book!.......2007-02-06

I began reading this book unsure of what I'd encounter. I knew I was tired of hearing "how awful the United States is!"...from Americans!! And I knew that the general consensus outside the States was that "we" are deserving of having our chickens come home to roost!! I was pretty much descouraged about the growing antiAmericanism I lived with daily.

Daniel Flynn is an excellent writer and thinker! He deftly describes how much of what I am feeling, what all Americans face every day...and most importantly...what our younger generations are taught from the time they enter school, is all a concerted effort on the part of American Leftists to undermine our country. IT IS NOT PARANOIA IF THEY REALLY ARE AFTER YOU!

Flynn leads us through all of the issues and lies the Left doesn't want you to know. He gives you information that you can use to "reeducate" your children & yourself, and makes you feel good about everything this wonderful country stands for!

Most importantly Daniel FLynn gives us "Chapter 6: America's True Legacy." This is the chapter in his book that blows away every Leftist accusation there is! Clearly and concisely Flynn ennumerates all of the amazing and unparelleled "gifts" America has brought to the World. I now feel great again about my country - and strong enough to fight off any Leftist threat!

This book should be required reading! Way to go Dan! I can't wait for your next book

bigeasy51

Are Conservatives the Only True Patriots?.......2006-10-17

Author Daniel Flynn is a man who feels strongly about America's place in world history, its legacy, and its contributions to world culture. He doesn't appreciate it when people attack the USA from within and in this book he explains what he feels are the root causes and the motives of those who engage in this type of behavior on a regular basis. Originally published in 2002 and then updated in 2004, this provocative book challenges the positions taken by those on the so- called "Left", with the author explaining why he feels the activism of these people is not only wrong, but also anti- American at its core.

One thing that should be explained right away is what the book means by the "Left", because I was confused by this at first. When I started to read, I thought the book was referring to today's Democratic Party when it attacked members of the Left, but this isn't quite the case. The group the book is referring to isn't your average, run of the mill Democrat. What the book is actually referring to are the more radical elements within the liberal sector: Those who feel the USA is to blame for most of the world's problems and who openly speak out against the place they call home whenever anything goes wrong in the world.

This book has a few good points to make in this book and positions on key criticisms are explained fairly well, even if the author is a little too brief and blunt at times. For example, I like the book's explanations about the tendency of feminists, minority rights activists, and others to exploit any little incident they can find, past or present, as a way to further their cause. These various groups do, indeed, make exaggerated claims on a regular basis and they are quick to blame the American system when something goes wrong. Many activists are guilty of this, and the book makes a valid complaint on this point. I also like his refutation of some of the pet theories of the "Left" and why they are so wrong, like the loathing of the system of capitalism even though it has created the world's wealthiest nation. These, and other topics like them, are defended well and what the book says makes good sense. These arguments can also be supported with facts, adding to their validity.

With the remainder of the book, the arguments are not as solid and the author tends to get carried away with his blind patriotism. The author doesn't directly admit it, but he seems to suggest that any criticism of government makes a person unpatriotic. To this, I must ask the author the obvious question: At what point does one stop accepting anything the government says or does as morally correct? Where does one draw the line? According to this book, no criticism is valid because the USA, while not perfect, has a better record than any other nation and that we, its citizens, should be grateful to live here and should sing our nation's praises on a daily basis. This blind patriotism seems very shortsighted and it makes me wonder if and when the author would consider the actions of government to be worthy of criticism.

Another thing about this book that is less than appealing is its extremist language. The book argues against liberal extremists, but the author feels so strongly about the "Left" and its anti- American sentiment that he sees no problem using some extreme talk of his own. Statements like "The Left slanders America" and "The Left despises capitalism" are made throughout this book and it starts to get a little irritating after a while. I can agree that there are some on the Left who really do feel this way, but I don't think words like "despises" and "slander" are accurate words to use when talking about the majority of the people who consider themselves members of the Left. I can agree, for example, that some members of the Left are against unequal economic status. But I don't think the majority of them would advocate eliminating capitalism to solve the problem.

The United States of America has offered much to the people of the world and to the progress of mankind. This book is correct when it points out the contributions made by Americans during the industrial age; the many inventions that were created at the hand of an American citizen; and the generosity of Americans toward others in the world during a natural disaster or other time of great need. The book takes pride with these accomplishments and there is no problem with that. But the book goes overboard when it speaks about patriotism like it is an obligation- a duty to which there are few if any exceptions. And to think differently, to criticize American government policy, makes one guilty of treason according to the line of reasoning used in this book.

The title used for this book and its blunt language are certain to get some people steaming mad and that is the way the author intended it. The book is a mixed bag as far as its content and message, so I'm going to give this book a rating of three stars and a recommendation, but not by much. It has some important points to make, yes. But I could have done without the author's self- righteousness and his tendency to generalize everyone on the Left as someone who despises his/her country.

Hate Is Indeed The Right Word.......2006-01-30

There is so much anti-American sentiment worldwide that one is not surprised to find that these strident deniers of all worthwhile things traditionally American are often of the homegrown variety. In WHY THE LEFT HATES AMERICA, Daniel J. Flynn takes the Left to task as he analyzes who they are, why they think the way they do, and what the Right can say to refute the Left's most egregious charges. Flynn places current vitriolic hatred of America within an historical context. He notes that those who shout the loudest are often the same ones who in the mid 1960s stormed the ivy citadels of Columbia University in their protest against the Vietnam War. Those bearded radicals upset far more than the placid decorum of a few harried college administrators. Over the next few decades they became the new generation of administrators and teachers. They wrote books revamping history, taught a brand of history that focused only on America's acknowledged blighted past and carefully overlooked an unacknowledged glory filled record of achievement. Flynn notes that the trend toward anti-American thought began with the early Communist converts of this country in the mid 1920s. It was not difficult for these converts to attract the leaders of a series of oppressed minorities to their cause: W. E. B. DuBois, Paul Robeson, and Lincoln Steffens. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the race toward finishing the job begun by DuBois, Robeson, and Steffens accelerated. I seem to recall that it was only then that I began to read about a new source of blame America first; the Frankfurt School of Max Horkheimer, Erich Fromm, Theodor Adorno, and Georg Lukacs revamped their then debunked Critical Theory to criticize American culture from top to bottom. Flynn does a thorough job of connecting the ideological dots between the early Communists, the later neo-Communists, and the born again Critical Theorists, all of whom made it clear that in the contest between literal truth and inflexible ideology it must be the latter that had to triumph. In fact, a central tenet of Flynn's book is that nearly all of those who shout out that the United States is to blame for all of the world's real and imagined ills share the common belief that any rumor or discredited theory that vindicates their core beliefs must be accepted as literal truth, regardless of hard evidence to the contrary. The reverse is also true; any proven fact that contradicts their core beliefs is either conveniently ignored or-what can only be seen as a colossal gall-that such evidence is admitted to be true but still does not discredit those beliefs.

The most fascinating part of Flynn's book is his chapter on The Five Big Lies:
Myth #1: American women live under a patriarchy
Myth #2: America is the world's leading threat to the environment
Myth #3: America is a racist nation
Myth #4: The United States is an imperial power
Myth #5: The rich get richer, the poor get poorer
Flynn examines each of these in turn since the typical anti-American sentiment most often involves one or more such charges. Flynn debunks each one not by denying America never suffered from any of them, but by noting that America now looks pretty good in comparison with the rest of the world. Ultimately, Flynn defends America not by claiming that it is some impossibly perfect utopia, but by pointing out that there must be a reason why so many third world inhabitants suffer greatly to arrive here, rather than indulge in the reverse. For those who wonder why the extreme Left fringe of the Democratic Party truly hates America in general and George Bush in particular, Flynn's book is a good place to begin.

Innoculate yourself against the hate of the left.......2005-09-15

The hate here is the hate that the Left seems to have not only for American, but the notion of Western Civilization in general. In the immortal words of a bunch of Stanford Leftists: "Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho! Western Civ has got to go!" It is interesting that the left continually rails against Western Civilivation and Christianity, yet these are the very societies that have created the unprecedented freedoms to attack them from within. Something the Left tries to skirt around at all costs.

Now, that is the left? Flynn defines it very narrowly. The left isn't all liberals, rather it is the left-wing of the liberal movement. Flynn is not making the claim that the rank and file of the Democratic party and the liberal/progressive movement is anti-America. Anyone who has actually read this book would pick up on that rather quickly. He really is after the fringe that demonstrably hates the United States and what it stands for. He very helpfully provides specific examples of the anti-America types of which he refers.

The book begins talking about specific instances of anti-American hehavior and statements following 9/11 before exposing the origins of anti-Americanism. Flynn then talks about the five big lies that liberalism claims America and Western Civilization in general is. For example,the notion that American women live under patriarchy. That is flat wrong and most people can see that is wrong without too much thought. As an American who has traveled in several countries, I have seen real patriarchal societies, and American society isn't it. Others include the idea that America is racist (if America were so racist, why are Blacks and Asians flocking to America) and the false claim of U.S. as the imperial power. I won't give it all away. Get the book. Flynn then compares Western culture to other cultures that simply can't hold a light to the freedom and tolerance present in Western cultures, including American culture. Finally, Flynn goes into a discussion of the true meaning and legacy of America.

This is a good read. There are more than thirty pages of notes (which would be more than thirty pages more than the liberal book I am currently making my way through.) The work has been meticulously research. All items in which I myself engaged in a fact check on all panned out. To me, this work has a high level of credibility, is highly readible, and will restore the pride you truly had in America, but liberal lies had stipped away.

a balanced review.......2005-09-09

First, the problematic word in the title: "the Left". Among the reviews below, you will see considerable disagreement as to who the Left is and what the Left stands for. Much of the confusion is that the word "liberal" and the word "Left" are conflated by many/most people on the left and on the right. The sad fact is that people in general (left or right) do not know what liberalism is and hence do not know the difference between liberalism and leftism. Some suppose it is a matter of degree. A review is not the place to teach fundamental principles of political philosophy. You'll have to get an authoritative book on the subject to find out (by "authoritative" I do not refer to pop political polemics, whatever their merits). To whet your curiosity, I'll only say that liberalism and leftism, although they agree on social justice, hold totally opposite positions on two other fundamental principles.

This confusion is exploited by the Left. They call themselves "liberals". This leads many liberals to identify "liberalism" with whatever is being promoted by the Left. This charade also succeeds in duping conservatives into lumping together the Left with liberals (cf. Ann Coulter). Thus, most liberals are going along with leftist practices thinking that they are being true to liberalism. This is the most effective tactic the Left has.

The most serious problem with this book is that it does not answer the question why. This shows that the author does not know why. And this leads him to fail to provide a convincing picture of Leftists and their motives, which in turn makes the book unconvincing to liberals, centrists and moderates. A popular book that provides such an understanding is The Rape of Alma Mater. However, there is still much data in this book that should receive serious consideration. (Incidentally, the review by Library Journal tends to confirm Flynn's contention that librarians have bought into the Left mindset.)

It is also amusing to read the hate reviews below, especially when they shriek that they do NOT hate America!@!!!@!*!!

The most serious shortcoming of the book is the fact that the Left is doing far worse things than this book mentions. To find out what, read the aforementioned Rape of Alma Mater, as well as Christina Hoff Sommers' well-known book, and Kors & Silvergate. And incidentally, the authors of these books are true liberals, not right-wing hardliners.

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