If I had a hammer

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Isserman's provocative theme is the New Left's unacknowledged ties to the Old Left that it has repudiated. His scholarly history is useful in tracing the roots of contemporary U.S. radicalism. Conscientious objectors who refused to fight in World War II participated in postwar communal experiments. Their Americanized version of Gandhi's pacifism would inform the civil rights movement as well as civil defense protests of the early 1960s. Author of Which Side Were You On?, a study of the American Communist Party, Isserman here examines the CP's collapse in the late 1950s. He portrays renegade socialist Max Shachtman, mentor of Michael Harrington and Irving Howe, as a manipulative recluse fond of sectarian squabbles. The author takes his story up to Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a common ground where New Leftists forged a politics of personal morality while members of the old guard discarded outdated dogmas. (September 22)

Library Journal

This excellent study focusing on the Communist Party, Max Shachtman, Dissent , and the peace movement demonstrates that the left of the 1950s had an important influence on the next generation of American radicals. A central assertion is that ``the early new left emerged from the old left in ways that made it difficult to perceive where one ended and the other began.'' The author believes that while the upheavals of the 1960s resulted from a ``complex interaction of demographics, economics, and politics,'' the actions of an earlier generation of American radicals also had an important influence. A provocative reexamination of postwar American radicalism that will stimulate controversy and further study. Recommended. John R. Sillito, Weber State Coll. Lib., Ogden, Utah