Customer Reviews

Izzy: A Biog Of I.f. Stone

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Professor Robert Cottrell's biography of I.F. Stone offers startling insights into the complex world of one of the 20th century's most captivating journalists. This book, obviously the result of years of dedicated research, says as much about I.F. Stone as it does about the author Cottrell. Not only does the book depict Stone as a central character in the radical left, but also it places Cottrell as one of our most significant biographers of left-wing intellectuals (also see Cottrell's other biographies about Roger Nash Baldwin, the founder of the ACLU, and Nicholas Comfort). A biography should be assiduously researched and fair-minded, coveying its subject's contributions and conflicts. Cottrell accomplishes this, but the biography goes beyond a factual depiction, in that it also conveys both its author's and its subject's passion for left-leaning ideals. This is a brave work about a brave man.

The review you have unstarred was delivered by me to offer a sampling of positive analyses about Izzy. I gave my own book 5 stars, not 0, as you have indicated.

Izzy offers a not always objective look at its subject, and one that could
have benefitted from tigher editing. As a stylist, Cottrell
seems to borrow from certain sections of Numbers, listing name after
name. He also makes the same points repeatedly, which can wear
on the reader at times.

Stone himself is made out to be a hero, and the author presents
some good reasons for supporting this -- Stone almost never
followed the pack blindly during his long career as a journalist,
and by following his instincts, rather than seeking approval of
sources, he was able to break big stories, on Vietnam in particular.

Cottrell, in his efforts to make Izzy a hero, sometimes glosses over some of the questions he raises about
Stone's character, such as his reluctance to treat left-leaning
nations with the same acid-test he applied to right-wing nations.

Cottrell does not ignore Izzy's inconsistencies, though. Readers will
will understand why Stone was at one time or another at odds
with not only the Establishment but his own friends on the
left.

Perhaps the real value of Izzy comes from the context it gives to
Izzy's times. One follows the rise of Liberalism in the '30s,
and gains perspective on why it faded as a force in American
politics and society, and how McCarthyism evolved.

Iggy Stone was a terrific jounalist,holding the powers that be feet to the fire,as it were.Howevere, his undying Stalinist sympathies and loyalities suggest a blind eye,which discolrs much of what he wrote, for me anyway. Whether or not he was a paid soviet agent[professor Cottrell dismisses this] or not,would we be as tolerant of his leanings if he were a Fascist? Think of Ezra Pound, his vitriolic and poisonous braodcasts,and hgow he has been tarnished.Or Lindbergh.To be preached to on moral responsibility from soemone who ignored the atrocities that were day to day life in the Soviet Union is bizzare,if not wilfully ignorant.We have a responsibility to satnd up for all victims, as Albert Camus said,not to be on the side of the exucutioners. Stone was not, despite all his acumen and style...

Anyone who has read Stone's account of the Korean War (as I did a few decades ago) cannot be surprised at what is implied--strongly implied--by the Venona transcripts, and that is that Stone was a mouthpiece for Comintern in the US. Everything he wrote in Hidden History is not just wrong, but despicable lies...and Soviet records confirm this. If Stone had been an independently-minded journalist with a different slant, there is no way he could have been so far off on the origins of the Korean War. The only explanation for his take on it was...surprise!...it was the view being promulgated by the Soviets/Chinese/North Koreans.

To call this guy an independent journalist is like calling Rush Limbaugh a socialist. He was, if not a spy, an agent of communism. And if you missed the launches of NK missiles and their nuke test lately, you missed the fruits of Mr. Stone's labor.

The Venona decrypts of Soviet cable prove beyond any doubt that I.F. Stone was a paid Communist spy. If you don't believe me, read the decrypts yourself (do a search here on "Venona"). He worked to spread propaganda in America for a brutal Soviet regime that killed tens of millions, and he was paid to do it. When he died, his family burned all his private papers to conceal the truth, but ultimately he was exposed by Venona in 1994.

I read this book with morbid fascination at how the liberal media touted this guy as "a Gibraltar of journalistic integrity" and "The most honest reporter in America" even as he worked to destroy our country. It's sad that even today few people are aware of the truth about this evil man who hated our American democratic, free-market values but embraced the monstrous totalitarianism of the Soviets.