Norman Podhoretz: A Biography
Literature professor Jeffers, editor of The Norman Podhoretz Reader (2004), here narrates the life story of a major intellectual anchor of the neoconservative movement. It is, in part, a story of social mobility and intellectual development. Raised in working-class Brooklyn, young Podhoretz studied at Columbia and was noticed by Lionel Trilling, which opened the door to Cambridge and a place among New York’s intellectual elite, whose left-leaning politics he would later famously renounce. Intellectual combat is another major theme: it was the era of serious intellectuals and serious intellectual periodicals, and as editor of the conservative Commentary, Podhoretz was at the center of many of the twentieth century’s most vehement and consequential cultural debates and had the ear of powerful men like Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Jeffers notes some of Podhoretz’s more controversial moments—criticism of feminism and homosexuality, support for bombing Iran—but his exuberant praise for his subject seems to take priority over critical examination of his positions. The result is a flawed yet fascinating look at a profoundly influential thinker. --Brendan Driscoll