Let Them Call Me Rebel: Saul Alinsky, His Life and Legacy [Hardcover]

Sanford D. Horwitt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 12, 1989

In the course of his flamboyant career as an all-purpose activist, Saul Alinsky went from organizing working-class ethnics in one of Chicago's most blighted neighborhoods to mapping out strategies for the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s. He enlisted allies-from Catholic clergymen to labor unionists and black activists-in battles waged against opponents from slumlords to the Eastman Kodak corporation. The range of Alinsky's activities, the intensity of his beliefs, and his exhilarating mixture of crudeness and calculation almost vibrate off the pages of this passionate and inspiring biography.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Folk hero to 1960s student activists, community organizer Saul Alinsky (1909-1972) believed that citizenship meant participation and a questioning attitude toward authority. Raised in a Chicago slum by Russian-Jewish parents, he started out as a criminologist working with imprisoned mobsters and teenage gangs. Organizing a neighborhood council in Chicago's stockyard transformed him into a social activist. In this solid biography, Horwitt, a political consultant to advocacy groups, limns two sides of Alinsky: the self-promoter and fundraiser with elitist connections, and the populist who was adept at rallying apathetic, demoralized people against racism, slum landlords, poverty and unresponsive institutions. Alinsky's personal tragedies--his first wife drowned, his second wife had multiple sclerosis--seemed to drive him harder in crusading for social justice. His sharp criticism of what he saw as shortcomings in the civil rights movement and the federal war on poverty make this book timely. Photos.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This is an important account of a "complex and idiosyncratic" urban populist who insisted that power was the keystone of social change. Horwitt expands on the work done by P. David Finks in The Radical Vision of Saul Alinsky ( LJ 7/84) to produce a comprehensive appraisal of Alinksy's "colorful confrontational tactics" as a community organizer and his influence on a "succeeding generation of social activists." Streetwise yet reflective, Alinsky was a true believer in the possibility of American democracy as a means of attaining social justice "for ordinary people." Horwitt has done an especially good job discussing Alinsky's youth and personal life. An insightful and well-written study, recommended for all academic and larger public libraries.
- John R. Sillito, Weber State Coll. Lib., Ogden, Ut.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 595 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (November 12, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394572432
• ISBN-13: 978-0394572437
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #981,227 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Let Them Call Me Rebel, September 29, 2008

By 

Ronald E. Stackler (Malibu, California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Let Them Call Me Rebel: Saul Alinsky: His Life and Legacy (Paperback)

This book is required reading for anyone who is interested in understanding what a "community organizer" is and what he does in Chicago. Barack Obama worked for organizations founded by Saul Alinsky and run by his proteges.
Obama never gives details of his community organizing, but this book tells what he would have been doing for his several years in the 1980's in Chicago: teaching people how to boycott, protest and threaten the economically and politically powerful in order to get what they want.
It is a unique training, to say the least, for a Presidential candidate.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Some reality for Alinksy admirers and critics to check., August 14, 2010

By 

Ronald H. Arnold (Bellevue, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Let Them Call Me Rebel: Saul Alinsky: His Life and Legacy (Paperback)

This fat biography of an American icon of greatness/evil (take your pick) has something to annoy everyone. Admirers will cringe to learn that their favorite Alinsky stories were mere bluster and self-promotion. Critics will droop when they learn that his references to Lucifer and Marx were deliberate provocative twaddle, not his true beliefs. Those who fell for any of that, meet the real Alinsky in the meticulous research of author Sanford Horwitz. Alinsky was street smart and ivory tower smart - sociology degree, insider studying the Al Capone mob for his PhD in criminology, criminologist for the Illinois state prison system, labor organizer for the CIO who applied union methods to communities, grant-seeker who pried tons of money from Chicago's wealtiest elite (the Marshall Field fortune), and practical idealist raging for justice for underdogs of any flavor. His books Reveille for Radicals and Rules for Radicals don't tell you HOW he organized communties, but this superb biography does. Critics take heed: you don't know half how dangerous he really was. Admirers, this undeservedly obscure bio will geld your high-horse. Put a little reality into your Alinsky - read this book!

29 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Be thou a man, April 29, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Let Them Call Me Rebel: Saul Alinsky: His Life and Legacy (Paperback)

Saul Alinsky was a complex and colorful man of great integrity and a civic activist with world-wide influence. Dedicated to empowering the politically weak and unorganized, Alinsky is rightly credited as the founder of community self-help. In this highly readable account, we come to appreciate Alinsky's empathic genius and his flair for showmanship. He had an uncanny personal gift for discerning which acts of protest would get attention and results, as well as an ability to teach others some of the tricks of the trade. Of all the anecdotes in the book, perhaps the most memorable concerns the time that young Alinsky was hauled before his rabbi for socking a kid who had beat up his own best friend. Alinsky excuses his behavior as "eye for an eye", and part of the "American way". His rabbi's answer is memorable. "You think you're a man because you do what everyone else does. Now I want to tell you something the great Rabbi Hillel said: 'Where there are no men, be thou a man.' I want you to remember that." And Alinsky did.