American Radical
The Life and Times of I. F. Stone
By D. D. Guttenplan
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Hardcover, 9780374183936, 592pp.)
Publication Date: May 26, 2009
Categories: Editors, Journalists, Publishers
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Popular Front columnist and New Deal propagandist. Fearless opponent of McCarthyism and feared scourge of official liars. Enterprising, independent reporter and avid amateur classicist. As D.D. Guttenplan puts it in his compelling book, I.F. Stone did what few in his profession could—he always thought for himself. America's most celebrated investigative journalist himself remains something of a mystery, however. Born Isidor Feinstein in Philadelphia, raised in rural New Jersey, by the age of 25 this college drop-out was already an influential newsman, and enjoying extraordinary access to key figures in New Deal Washington and the friendship of important artists in New York.
It is Guttenplan’s wisdom to see that the key to Stone’s achievements throughout his singular career—and not just in his celebrated I.F. Stone’s Weekly—lay in the force and passion of his political commitments. Stone’s calm, forensic, yet devastating reports on American politics and institutions sprang from a radical faith in the long-term prospects for American democracy.
His testimony on the legacy of American politics from the New Deal and World War II to the era of the civil rights struggles, the Vietnam War, and beyond amounts to as vivid a record of those times as we are likely to have. Guttenplan's lively, provocative book makes clear why so many of his pronouncements have acquired the force of prophecy.
D. D. Guttenplan, a London correspondent for The Nation, is the author of The Holocaust on Trial. An award-winning former writer for New York Newsday and other American journals, Guttenplan is a frequent contributor to many magazines and newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic. He lives in London with his wife and children.
Popular Front columnist and New Deal propagandist. Fearless opponent of McCarthyism and feared scourge of official liars. Enterprising, independent reporter and avid amateur classicist. As D. D. Guttenplan puts it in his compelling book, I. F. Stone did what few in his profession could—he always thought for himself. America's most celebrated investigative journalist himself remains something of a mystery, however. Born Isadore Feinstein in Philadelphia, raised in rural New Jersey, by the age of 25 this college drop-out was already an influential newsman, and enjoying extraordinary access to key figures in New Deal Washington and the friendship of important artists in New York.
It is Guttenplan's wisdom to see that the key to Stone's achievements throughout his singular career—and not just in his celebrated I. F. Stone's Weekly—lay in the force and passion of his political commitments. Stone's calm, forensic, yet devastating reports on American politics and institutions sprang from a radical faith in the long-term prospects for American democracy.
His testimony on the legacy of American politics from the New Deal and World War II to the era of the civil rights struggles, the Vietnam War, and beyond amounts to as vivid a record of those times as we are likely to have. Guttenplan's lively, provocative book makes clear why so many of his pronouncements have acquired the force of prophecy.
"D. D. Guttenplan's brilliant biography of I. F. Stone is a wonderfully vivid portrait of a courageous journalist who exposed the follies of American policy in Vietnam. It is also an acutely observed, clear-eyed account of the dilemmas faced by the American left from the days of the Popular Front, through the McCarthy era, to the challenges of the civil rights movement and the New Left, giving us an indispensable analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of American Radicalism."—Anthony J. Badger, author of FDR: The First Hundred Days
"This is the right book at the right time from the right author. The right book, because I. F. Stone remains one of the great American voices whose words still catch fire all these years later. The right time, because in the age of Obama, liberals the world over are once again looking to the United States as a source of progressive inspiration. And the right author, because D. D. Guttenplan has that rare ability to combine scholarly rigor with an eye for a cracking human story—and the talent to tell it."—Jonathan Freedland, columnist for The Guardian
"A compelling account of an anti-establishment journalist who became a Washington insider, the book also provides a lively examination of the American Left, from the Roaring '20s to the misadventure in Vietnam."—Glenn C. Altschuler, NPR
"As much social and cultural history as biography—Guttenplan offers little about Stone's personal life—the narrative serves as a textbook for those not alive during the Stone ages. The Depression, American Communism, the New Deal, World War II, the Cold War, the civil-rights movement, the Vietnam War, Israel and the Middle East, assassinations and political corruption and cultural characters of all sorts—these are all critical to an understanding of Stone's life and work. Guttenplan, who began the book in 1990, makes certain that readers know what and who they are before he proceeds . . . Prodigious research and a grateful heart inform this essential biography of an irreplaceable journalist."—Kirkus Reviews
"Guttenplan provides a lively portrait of a journalist who was as passionate about radical politics and getting a story right as he was about ballroom dancing. Drawing on interviews with Stone's family and friends, the complete archive of Stone's writings—including fragments of letters—and two previous biographies of Stone, Guttenplan traces his subject's life and career from Stone's early upbringing as Isidor Feinstein in Philadelphia and his days as a college dropout to his birth as one of America's premier journalists in the pages of the Nation, PM and eventually his own I.F. Stone's Weekly. A brilliant gadfly and independent thinker, Stone was at once cozy with New Deal politicians and union leaders. He reported undercover from Palestine as he accompanied Holocaust survivors through a British blockade and became a hero of America's Jews. Guttenplan's lively biography brings back to life a man whose work has often been forgotten but whose writing and life provide a model for the kind of freethinking journalism missing in society today."—Publishers Weekly
D. D. Guttenplan, The Nation's London correspondent, is the author of The Holocaust on Trial: History, Justice and the David Irving Libel Case, and is an award-winning former writer for Newsday. His essays have appeared in many American journals and newspapers.
Praise for D.D. Guttenplan's The Holocaust on Trial: “Guttenplan sat through every day of the trial, and no wiser, more honest or more melancholy book will ever be written about it.” —Neal Ascherson “A mixture of superb reportage and serious reflection—about the role of Jewish identity politics in the United States, anti-Semitism in Britain and the historiography of the Cold War.” —Ian Buruma, New Yorker “An exemplary book.” —Observer “Well written . . . this is the best overall account we have so far of the trial as a whole and the personalities involved in it.” —Richard J. Evans, Sunday Telegraph
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