Overview
A passion for truth presents the best and most representative writings of Eric Breindel, the internationally renowned conservative thinker who for more than a decade ran the editorial page of the New York Post and was one of New York's most eloquent and influential voices.
Before his sudden death in March 1997 at the age of forty-two, Eric Breindel has already done more—and suffered more—than many people twice his age. At his funeral his eulogists made up a who's who of power and influence: Mayor Ed Koch, Governor George Pataki, Norman Podhoretz, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Henry Kissinger, Rupert Murdoch, and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who introduces this volume.
Breindel was a star early. He wrote editorials for the New Republic during his early years at Harvard College, where he was editorial chairman if the Harvard Crimson and graduated magna cum laude. He received graduate degrees from the London School of Economics and Harvard Law School before he was twenty-five—and all this despite a series of injuries and physical maladies that kept him in constant pain.
Caring deeply about politics—at the time he was a Democrat with neoconservative views on foreign policy—Breindel moved to Washington in 1983 and went to work for Daniel Patrick Moynihan on the Senate Intelligence Committee staff. At thirty he returned to journalism and was hired to run the New York Post's editorial and op-ed pages, also writing a weekly column called "Agendas." Over the next eleven years, in more than five hundred columns, Breindel came back relentlessly and passionately to only three topics: Communism, Israel and the fate of the Jews, and the fall and rise of New York City. All three were intimately connected for Breindel, the child of Holocaust survivors who made a new life for themselves in the United States.
In A Passion for Truth, John Podhoretz, Breindel's friend, colleague, and successor as the Post's editorial page editor, has selected sixty-nine of the "Agendas" columns, grouped them by major theme, and introduced and commented on them.
These collected columns, which show Breidel at his most intellectually, politically, and emotionally engaged, bring a special richness of insight, analysis, and emotion to some of our most important and compelling issues.
Editorials
Jay Nordlinger
Eric Breindel was, in all matters, a nuisance — a magnificent nuisance....On virtually every page of the new volume, there is inscribed a watchword: Be not afraid. No wonder they mourned so.—National Review
Ruth R. Wisse
This book reminds us of the toughness behind his diffident bearing, the moral stamina behind the aura of fragility. He succumbed only to illness, never to weakness. The traditional phrase, may his memory be for a blessing, is fulfilled by this testament to his mind and heart. —CommentaryJewish Press
[With A Passion for Truth], Eric Breindel has been ensured a lasting place on home and library booksehlves, thanks to HarperCollins publishers and New York Post associate editor John Pohoretz. In A Passion for Truth, a just-published collection of Breindel's best work, Podhoretz has brought together sixty-nine columns that, taken individually, highlight his late colleague's rigorous analytical ability and graceful prose style—and that in their totality provide an overview of some of the more contentious issues of an era.Natural Review
[Eric Breindel was] a singular talent...a major figure....He attracted controversy, scorn, and intense admiration. His style was both erudite and blunt. In his causes, he was unrelenting. He was an Everest of indignation, still inveighing while others had given out. Breindel proved just what an opinion writer can accomplish—provided he has the wit, intelligence, and guts. His work is enough to give obsession a good name. We see that he dedicated his career to an awesome task: memory-keeping and myth-destroying. Eric Breindel was, in all matters, a nuisance—a magnificent nuisance. He did the necessary, usually thankless work of memory-keeping and myth-destroying when others were unwilling, or incapable, or scared. He threw himself into the key questions of the century and shot back brave and true answers. He was an honest writer. And he was not afraid. On virtually every page of the new volume there is inscribed a watchword: Be not afraid.Forward
All [the writings] exhibit Breindel's knack for exposing what might be called ideological hypocrisy....Stunning....Groundbreaking....There was no columnist better at protecting the memory of the Holocaust.Jewish Press
[With A Passion for Truth ], Eric Breindel has been ensured a lasting place on home and library booksehlves, thanks to HarperCollins publishers and New York Post associate editor John Pohoretz. In A Passion for Truth , a just-published collection of Breindel's best work, Podhoretz has brought together sixty-nine columns that, taken individually, highlight his late colleague's rigorous analytical ability and graceful prose style—and that in their totality provide an overview of some of the more contentious issues of an era.Natural Review
[Eric Breindel was] a singular talent...a major figure....He attracted controversy, scorn, and intense admiration. His style was both erudite and blunt. In his causes, he was unrelenting. He was an Everest of indignation, still inveighing while others had given out. Breindel proved just what an opinion writer can accomplish—provided he has the wit, intelligence, and guts. His work is enough to give obsession a good name. We see that he dedicated his career to an awesome task: memory-keeping and myth-destroying. Eric Breindel was, in all matters, a nuisance—a magnificent nuisance. He did the necessary, usually thankless work of memory-keeping and myth-destroying when others were unwilling, or incapable, or scared. He threw himself into the key questions of the century and shot back brave and true answers. He was an honest writer. And he was not afraid. On virtually every page of the new volume there is inscribed a watchword: Be not afraid.Jay Nordlinger
Eric Breindel was, in all matters, a nuisance -- a magnificent nuisance....On virtually every page of the new volume, there is inscribed a watchword: Be not afraid. No wonder they mourned so. -- National ReviewRuth R. Wisse
This book reminds us of the toughness behind his diffident bearing, the moral stamina behind the aura of fragility. He succumbed only to illness, never to weakness. The traditional phrase, may his memory be for a blessing, is fulfilled by this testament to his mind and heart.— Commentary
Kirkus Reviews
Nearly 70 columns from The New York Post's late editorial page editor raise a conservative voice against perceived excesses of the progressive left. Podhoretz (Hell of a Ride), who succeeded Breindel at The Post, selected the essays, wrote the preface, and added commentary to each chapter. The book also contains tributes to Breindel, who died at 42 from Hodgkin's disease in 1997, by political notables such as Henry Kissinger and New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Breindel actually worked for Moynihan, a Democrat, and we learn that this Harvard graduate and friend of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., began as a Democrat with neoconservative leanings. Breindel's move further right in the mid-'80s was prompted by a variety of indignations on display here: the Soviet Union's campaigns against Jews and Israel, and the alleged leftist coddling of Communists (masked as "liberals" ), criminals (treated as victims), and minority racists (like Louis Farrakhan). The columns' titles alone recall the combative tone favored during Breindel's 11 years at the editorial page helm: "Nazis of the Left," "Smearing Clarence Thomas," "The Rosenbergs and Their Apologists," "Kristallnacht in Brooklyn," "White Guilt," "Filling a Quota," "The Shame of the United Nations," and "What Jesse Jackson Didn't Say."Podhoretz sees Breindel's obsessions as fitting for the child of Holocaust survivors who saw the totalitarian Soviets and their American apologists as the new Nazis and feared a progressive world where (white) victims (like the Central Park jogger) are blamed, and victimizers (like the shot mugger who successfully sued for million) are lionized. One needn't accept overstatementslike "McCathyism is practiced most enthusiastically, and most efficiently, by those who dwell in the precincts of the Left" to agree with Podhoretz that Breindel offers a bracing counterpoint to the PC police. The collection ends with a tribute from New Republic editor Martin Peretz. Whether one finds Breindel's pervasive anti-Communism neurotically obsessive or fiercely patriotic, his editorials make for powerful, historic reading.