MARC Record from marc_columbia

LEADER: 06806cam a2200385 a 4500
001 7819330
005 20221201035048.0
008 100217t20102010nyu b 001 0 eng
010 $a 2010005268
020 $a9781586487492
020 $a1586487493
029 1 $aCDX$b10750237
035 $a(OCoLC)ocn435418535
035 $a(OCoLC)435418535
035 $a(NNC)7819330
035 $a7819330
040 $aDLC$cDLC$dBTCTA$dYDXCP$dC#P$dBWX$dCDX$dOrLoB-B
043 $an-us---
050 00 $aDS101.C63$bB35 2010
082 00 $a305.892/407305$222
100 1 $aBalint, Benjamin,$d1976-$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n2010009113
245 10 $aRunning Commentary :$bthe contentious magazine that transformed the Jewish left into the neoconservative right /$cBenjamin Balint.
250 $a1st ed.
260 $aNew York :$bPublicAffairs,$c[2010], ©2010.
300 $axi, 290 pages ;$c25 cm
336 $atext$btxt$2rdacontent
337 $aunmediated$bn$2rdamedia
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index.
505 00 $gPART I.$tOUTSIDERS -- $g1.$tLoneliness -- $g2.$tIndependence -- $g3.$tDiscovery -- $g4.$tAnti-Communists -- $gPART II.$tBETWEEN NO AND YES -- $g5.$tThe Devil's Decade -- $g6.$tMugged by Reality -- $g7.$tCome Home, Democrats -- $gPART III.$tINSIDERS -- $g8.$tIf I Am Not For Myself -- $g9.$tZealpolitik -- $g10.$tWorld War IV.
520 1 $a""Benjamin Balint's history of Commentary magazine is nothing less than a history of the intellectual life of Jews in America as they go from being cultural outsiders to being consummate insiders. It is written with enormous verve, capturing the many colorful characters who created and shaped a publication that was unlike anything the American-Jewish reading community had seen before. Balint's judicious, non-partisan account doesn't miss a shift in the political landscape, whether on the Left or on the Right, and he has an uncanny ability to steer clear of apologetics or screeds. This is intellectual history as it should be written: lucid, capacious and unfailingly readable."---Daphne Merkin, novelist and critic" ""Lucid, scrupulously documented, and deeply interesting from beginning to end....Balint manages to remain impressively dispassionate, letting the facts speak for themselves. This is a fascinating account of an important episode in cultural history."---Robert Alter, author of Pen of Iron; American Prose and the King James Bible" ""In this eloquent and richly informed book, Benjamin Balint reads the story of Commentary as an Àmerican Talmud'---a great mass of position statements and debates, always passionate and sometimes contradictory, that illuminate the larger intellectual history of America's Jews."---Anthony Grafton, Henry Putnam University Professor of History, Princeton University" ""Balint's well-written book is far more than a history, it is ... the most important work of its kind published for years."---Walter Laqueur, historian" ""I strongly recommend Running Commentary to anyone interested in the cultural and political thought of Jewish or other Americans in our time."---Jon D.Levenson, Albert A. List Professor of Jewish Studies, Harvard Divinity School" ""As well-written and brainy as the magazine it chronicles....A provocative, passionate, erudite, and entertaining account of the people and ideas that defined the postwar era, transforming Jewish outsiders into American insiders."---Jonathan D. Sarna, Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History, Brandels University, and author of American Judaism: A History" "In The Years of Ferment following World War II, a new generation of brilliant Jewish-American thinkers clamored to leave an indelible mark on the country's culture and politics. Commentary was their magazine." "Commentary helped advance then-little-known writers including Bernard Malamud and Philip Roth; it published the first English translations of Isaac Bashevis Singer and The Diary of Anne Frank. In its pages Hannah Arendt criticized Zionism, and Norman Mailer explored Hasidism. Saul Bellow reviewed Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man and Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus. Michael Harrington's essay "Fifty Million Poor" became the basis for his famous book The Other America, which would jump start LBJ's War on Poverty." "Founded by the children of immigrants steeped in radical socialist politics and labor activism, Commentary began life as a voice for the alienated, a forceful advocate for civil rights, and a forum for new approaches to fiction and literary criticism. But as the "family" of intellectuals centered on the magazine wrote their way into the American mainstream, and the civil rights movement they'd championed flowered into the cultural upheaval of the late 1960s, the magazine despaired of student radicals, of the sexual revolution, of the women's and gay rights movements, of the influence of the Beats. Recolling from the excesses of the '60s counterculture, Commentary began to articulate a new political stance---neoconservatism---that would make it as influential on the political right as it had once been on the liberal left. Commentary acted as an agent of renewal that not only articulated a confident Cold War anticommunism but also invigorated American conservatism. Ultimately, the magazine would guide the neoconservatives from the Cold War to the War on Terror---from World War III to World War IV, as they would say---laying along the way the intellectual foundations for the Bush Doctrine and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A once marginal group of ex-leftists had found that their ideas were extraordinarily relevant to the country at large." "How and why did this shift happen? In this lively history, based on unprecedented access to the magazine's archives and dozens of original interviews, Benjamin Balint shows how throughout its twists and turns and about-faces Commentary registered the decisive moments in postwar American life. Through the words of Commentary's sharp-tongue writers---and those of its equally vehement critics---he reveals how the magazine's evolution reflected changes in the Jewish relationship to America itself. The magazine, Balint shows, "hosted the Americanization of the Jewish mind, which in turn released potent forces that continue to shape American literature and politics today.""--BOOK JACKET.
630 00 $aCommentary (New York, N.Y.)$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n2004050503
650 0 $aJewish periodicals$zUnited States$xHistory$y20th century.
650 0 $aJews$zUnited States$xIntellectual life.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2008122307
650 0 $aJews$zUnited States$xPolitics and government$y20th century.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2008122430
852 00 $bglx$hDS101.C63$iB35 2010