For a generation, Alan M. Wald's
The New York Intellectuals
has stood as the authoritative account of an often misunderstood
chapter in the history of a celebrated tradition among literary
radicals in the United States. His passionate investigation of over
half a century of dissident Marxist thought, Jewish
internationalism, fervent political activism, and the complex art
of the literary imagination is enriched by more than one hundred
personal interviews, unparalleled primary research, and critical
interpretations of novels and short stories depicting the inner
lives of committed writers and thinkers. Wald's commanding
biographical portraits of rebel outsiders who mostly became
insiders retains its resonance today and includes commentary on Max
Eastman, Elliot Cohen, Lionel Trilling, Sidney Hook, Tess
Slesinger, Philip Rahv, Mary McCarthy, James T. Farrell, Irving
Kristol, Irving Howe, Hannah Arendt, and more. With a new preface
by the author that tracks the rebounding influence of these
intellectuals in the era of Occupy and Bernie Sanders, this
anniversary edition shows that the trajectory and ideological
ordeals of the New York intellectual Left still matters today.