Norman Podhoretz
Subtitle: a biography
By: Thomas L. Jeffers
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9780521198141
Description: "This is the first biography of the Jewish-American intellectual Norman Podhoretz, longtime editor of the influential magazine Commentary. As both an editor and a writer, he spearheaded the countercultural revolution of the 1960s and--after he "broke ranks"--the neoconservative response. For years he defined what was at stake in the struggle against communism; recently he has nerved America for a new struggle against jihadist Islam; always he has given substance to debates over the function of religion, ethics, and the arts in our society. The turning point of his life occurred, at the age of forty near a farmhouse in upstate New York, in a mystic clarification. It compelled him to "unlearn" much that he had earlier been taught to value, and it also made him enemies. Revealing the private as well as the public man, Thomas L. Jeffers chronicles a heroically coherent life"--Provided by publisher.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Prologue; title: Brownsville; title: Columbia; title: Cambridge; title: The family and the army; title: The practicing critic; title: Boss; title: "This was bigger than both of us"; title: One shoe drops; title: Dropping the other shoe; title: Liberalism lost; title: George Lictheim, Pat Moynihan, and a lecture tour; title: Domesticities, Lillian Hellman, and the question of America's nerve; title: Moynihan, Podhoretz, and "the party of liberty"; title: Breaking and closing ranks; title: Present dangers; title: "The great Satan of the American romantic Left"; title: Regulated hatreds; title: Culture wars; title: A literary Indian summer; title: Verdicts; title: New wars for a new century; title: Epilogue.