Industrial & Scientific The Rosie Effect The Rosie Effect The Rosie Effect The Rosie Effect Shop Men's Running Shoes Shop Men's Running Shoes Shop Men's Cloud Drive Photos nav_sap_plcc_6M_fly_beacon Artists To Watch Amazon Fire Phone, now available unlocked Momentum Fire TV New Year in Beauty HA Digital Week Digital Week Digital Week Fire tablets Year-End Kindle Daily Deals Video Games Accessories Week Shop snow sports Toys & Games Deals
Left Illusions: An Intellectual Odyssey and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle. Learn more
Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon
Flip to back Flip to front
Listen Playing... Paused   You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more
See this image

Left Illusions: An Intellectual Odyssey Paperback – November, 2004


See all 5 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions
Amazon Price New from Used from
Kindle
"Please retry"
Paperback
"Please retry"
$10.30 $0.83
Year-End%20Deals%20in%20Books
--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.
NO_CONTENT_IN_FEATURE

Holiday Deals in Books
Holiday Deals in Books
Find deals for every reader in the Holiday Deals in Books store, featuring savings of up to 50% on cookbooks, children's books, literature & fiction, and more.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 497 pages
  • Publisher: Spence Publishing Company (November 2004)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1890626562
  • ISBN-13: 978-1890626563
  • Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #493,900 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  •  Would you like to update product info, give feedback on images, or tell us about a lower price?


Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

While most kids his age were outside playing baseball, young Horowitz was attending Communist rallies and parades. During the '60s Horowitz stayed true to his radical roots, becoming a prominent leader of the New Left. But when a close friend was murdered by the Black Panthers, Horowitz sank into a pit of personal and political despair. After a 10-year exile from politics, he finally came to grips with what he now saw as the inhumanity of his radical life and committed what was considered the greatest betrayal (he has been called a Nazi and a "demented lunatic"): he became a conservative. His latest book is a collection of articles, one published for the first time here, and some excerpts from previous books, tracing the scope of his political journey. He writes on race, AIDS and the war on terror, but saves most of his energy for what he views as the destructive force of the progressives, the harm wrought by Communists around the world as well as in America, a criticism all the more poignant coming from one who had once marched in their ranks. Horowitz demonstrates a clear and sound thought process as well as an unusual talent for good writing. Whatever one many think about Horowitz's more controversial views and tactics-such as his denunciation on campuses around the country of the slavery reparations movement-he is one of the best political writers on either side of the aisle.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Horowitz demonstrates a clear and sound thought process....one of the best political writers on either side of the aisle." -- Publishers Weekly --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Customer Reviews

I really recommend this book, it is very enlightening.
L Samma
His final lines in this book address this question again, and he asks whether the truth will continue to remain in the shadows.
Mishima
David Horowitz is amazing in his passion for political truths and his intellectual honesty.
E Gutman

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

83 of 91 people found the following review helpful By ShamayimBlue on July 30, 2004
Format: Hardcover
David Horowitz provides the reader with a unique perspective of political life on both the left and the conservative right. For half of his life he was one of the most prominent American leftists. He helped establish the New Left - a movement that sought to dissociate the socialist dream from the gulags of Stalin - and committed himself in various ways to its cause: organizing the first anti-war rally at Berkeley, editing the left's most definitive periodicals, and aiding such organizations as the Black Panthers. Personal tragedy (the murder of a close friend at the hands of the Black Panther, and the subsequent cover-up by the entire left community) made him deeply question his ideological commtiments, and after a period of several years, he emerged again as a figure of the conservative right.

It is a sad fact about the state of political discourse (especially on college campuses) that people of the left automatically brand people of the right as racists, bigots, fascists and sexist pigs. Read this book - it will disabuse you of such preposterous notions (if you indeed believe in them). Though there are certainly prominent right wing nuts (usually derided by other conservatives) you will quite clearly see the left's utter hypocrisy in levelling these accusations. With a clear, rational analysis - supported by facts - and made very readable by his lucid writing, Horowitz covers a broad range of issues in his debate with the left.
Read more ›
Comment Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback. If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
142 of 168 people found the following review helpful By Finman on December 22, 2003
Format: Hardcover
....
While this latest effort from the prolific Horowitz certainly contains autobiographical material, as one would expect of a book that follows an activist's ideological journey, it is really much more than that. The scope of the chapters range from the very specific (e.g., the propriety of reparations) to the demonstrated failings of ultra liberal, socialist or communist policies over the past century(as well as where they may well take us in the future if allowed to flourish). Conservatives will find their beliefs & suspicions reinforced by much of what the author writes. His appeal, however, lies not in simply stating time-worn principles from Conservatism 101. Horowitz has an uncanny knack for demanding of liberals the same consistency--in their theories/policies and the application of them--that they demand of others. He exposes demonstrably false assumptions, shows how they corrupt otherwise worthy goals, and in many instances work against the end they seek to achieve.
If there is one book I would buy in a minute after having read this one, it is a genuine, intellectually honest literary effort by Horowitz's opponents that exposes the factual or logical errors in Left Illusions. I suspect it would be a daunting task. I do not expect to see one. It is much easier to stick a label on someone, whether it be an accurate one or not, than take on discomforting facts that don't accommodate one's worldview. Horowitz has devoted countless hours and hundreds of pages documenting the errors of his past; not so much what he wanted for his fellow man, but how best it could be achieved. It's too bad some people are more interested in silencing or marginalizing him than in rebutting him and his work. I do understand their reluctance to take on that assignment, however. Name-calling has always been easier than debating.
1 Comment Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback. If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
63 of 75 people found the following review helpful By Frosty T. Kat on January 5, 2004
Format: Hardcover
I spent all weekend reading this book and could not put it down. The insights into the root causes of leftist illusions are fascinating, and are backed up by an awesome display of scholarly knowledge.
The book starts off slowly as it features some essays from Horowitz's past, but that really allows the plot to thicken in a sense, as the reader becomes engrossed in what amounts to a sort of ideological detective story as Horowitz investigates both his own motives and reasoning as well as that of his fellow leftists as he gradually frees himself from his enthrallment to Communism, then from Socialism, and finally from the left as a whole.
This is a must read for someone who is willing to look beneath the surface of politics to try and understand what makes the whole thing tick.
Comment Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback. If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
28 of 32 people found the following review helpful By "akowalsk" on January 3, 2004
Format: Hardcover
This is the first of Horowitz' books that I've read, and to anyone similarly unfamiliar with his writing it will serve as an important introduction and guide to the evolution of his thought over the past four decades. The work includes essays on his philosophical beginnings as a 'red diaper' baby, his intimate and instrumental involvement with the New Left, his principled and forceful repudiation and break with it, but it also extends to theoretical critiques of Marxism and can serve as supplemental reference to readers of any ideological orientation. The essays also cover his firsthand experiences with subjects that are currently hotly debated and matters of daily news coverage, especially his well-documented and controversial travels to college campuses throughout the United States. Horowitz' perspective is firsthand, his reasoning is clear and lucid, and his moral concern with the reconciliation of the past to the present is powerfully and honestly conveyed. This book will be valuable to any student or reader interested in the philosophical, cultural and political currents and countercurrents of the past forty years in America, and should be included at any University that suggests a reading list to undergraduates. Horowitz presents compelling and thoughful essays on subjects ranging from Solzhenitsyn to Martin Luther King, the Arab/Israeli conflict to the Reparations movement, from the War on Terror to the cultural battles being fought on college campuses, always with an eye toward historical context, personal significance, and the interrelationships between these subjects. My only serious criticism, which others here have stated, is that some of the material has previously been made available in other media.Read more ›
Comment Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback. If this review is inappropriate, please let us know.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Most Recent Customer Reviews


What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?