American Radical: The Life and Times of I. F. Stone [Hardcover]

D. D. Guttenplan (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0374183937 | ISBN-13: 978-0374183936 | Publication Date: May 26, 2009 | Edition: First Edition

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

At his death, reporter and amateur classicist I.F. Stone was hailed as an iconoclast of journalism, a dogged investigator and a concise and clever writer, an American institution and a journalist's journalist. At the same time, he was called wrongheaded and accused of being a KGB agent. In this sometimes workmanlike but often animated biography, Guttenplan (The Holocaust on Trial) 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. (June)
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Review

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

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 592 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition edition (May 26, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374183937
• ISBN-13: 978-0374183936
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #827,226 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A "Radical" Whose Life and Times Resonate Today, May 27, 2009

By 

Lawrence Friedman (St. Louis, MO USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: American Radical: The Life and Times of I. F. Stone (Hardcover)

I.F. Stone was an independent journalist now best known for the self-published "I.F. Stone's Weekly," which influenced a generation of crusading journalists. Stone presciently opposed the Vietnam War from the outset and otherwise set a standard for independence and analysis that his spiritual descendants, today's bloggers, can only emulate. Anyone interested in the great ideological, political, and cultural issues that engulfed 20th Century America and still affect us will want to read this fascinating biography. But if you come for the history what will keep you turning the pages is the portrait of a compelling and very human person (Stone smuggled himself into pre-independence Israel to see the first Arab-Israeli war first hand; in his old age, he taught himself ancient Greek and wrote a best seller about the trial of Socrates; after his death, he was unfairly targeted by the right wing as a Soviet agent). D.D. Guttenplan does a masterful job bringing to life the man and the times (just like the title says). Guttenplan has an impressive ability to describe Stone's world, whether in 1920s working-class Jewish Philadelphia or 1960s Washington and New York, and to summarize in a fair and perceptive way the many thorny political and ideological disputes that engulfed Stone, America, and the world. My standard for the merit of a book is how reluctant you are to put it down and how much food for thought it has given you. I loved meeting I.F. Stone, was sad to part company with him at the end, and was greatly enriched and inspired by Guttenplan's depiction of a life and times that continue to resonate today.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Important Book, May 27, 2009

By 

An Old Liberal (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: American Radical: The Life and Times of I. F. Stone (Hardcover)

D.D. Guttenplan has got it completely right. I actually knew Izzy Stone a little bit. He was a force of nature and perhaps the 20th century's most important -- and certainly most independent -- political journalist. He was also a completely independent radical who had a life-time commitment to social justice but never compromised his own autonomy or allowed himself to parrot any kind of party line. Guttenplan's clear and intelligent narrative gives us a full picture of Stone's irrascible integrity as well as his utter brilliance as a writer and political analyst. It's also a great read.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not to be forgotten, June 19, 2009

By 

C. Glass "Charles Glass" (Paris) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: American Radical: The Life and Times of I. F. Stone (Hardcover)

Izzy Stone's Weekly provides the best chronicle of its time, far more reliable and critical of power than the Times of any American city. Anyone with doubts to this man's integrity and contribution to the art (rather than the mere practice) of journalism need only watch the great documentary of the early 1970s, I.F. Stone's Weekly, or read D. D. Guttenplan's biography. While, as Will Rogers famously said, nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public, I. F. Stone treated that public as if it were the conscience of the republic that Thomas Jefferson believed it would be. While we may lament the degradation of democracy in the United States, it is worthwhile to read about a man who never doubted its importance or its potential. It is about time he had the fine biography he deserved.