The Other American : The Untold Life of Michael Harrington [Hardcover]

Maurice Isserman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2000

The first serious biography of "the man who discovered poverty" offers new perspective on the recent history of the American Left.. Maurice Isserman's bracingly honest, surprisingly touching biography traces the life of one of the heroes of the American Left and one of our country's most influential social critics and poverty experts. Most Americans first heard of Michael Harrington with the publication of The Other America, his seminal book on American poverty. Isserman expertly tracks Harrington's beginnings in the Catholic Worker movement, his abandonment of his once deeply-held Catholicism, his life in 1950s Greenwich Village, and his evolution as a thinker. Along the way Isserman dispels numerous myths, including several Harrington himself encouraged. And Isserman explains why Harrington, who more than any other single individual seemed perfectly positioned to play the role of adult mentor to the New Left in the 1960s, instead fell into disfavor with young campus activists, and lost the opportunity of a lifetime to make his democratic Socialist perspective a relevant force in American politics. Maurice Isserman's bracingly honest, surprisingly touching biography traces the life of one of the heroes of the American Left and one of our country's most influential social critics and poverty experts. Most Americans first heard of Michael Harrington with the publication of The Other America, his seminal book on American poverty. Isserman expertly tracks Harrington's beginnings in the Catholic Worker movement, his abandonment of his once deeply-held Catholicism, his life in 1950s Greenwich Village, and his evolution as a thinker. Along the way Isserman dispels numerous myths, including several Harrington himself encouraged. And Isserman explains why Harrington, who more than any other single individual seemed perfectly positioned to play the role of adult mentor to the New Left in the 1960s, instead fell into disfavor with young campus activists, and lost the opportunity of a lifetime to make his democratic Socialist perspective a relevant force in American politics. *The first authoritative, critical biography of an important American thinker, by one of today's most important historians of the Left Harrington's ideas on poverty and social justice are just as provocative today as they were forty years ago * For anyone interested in American Studies, post-war American social thought, the history of radicalism, or issues of social justice.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As Isserman notes, along with Silent Spring and The Feminine Mystique, Michael Harrington's The Other America stood out in the early 1960s as a beacon illuminating a vital, neglected part of America's political landscape. Ironically, although his vocation was as a movement-builder, his book alone sparked no movement; it did swiftly result in policy--President Johnson's War on Poverty--though without the focus or level of funding found in European welfare states that Harrington, a former Catholic Worker turned socialist, argued was necessary. Decades later, several European socialist leaders reputedly believed that had he been European, he would have been a prime minister. But since he wasn't, his life was lived in surroundings too small for his gifts. Sectarian politics swallowed much of his energy in the 1950s, leaving organizational commitments and battle scars that crippled his potential to play a leading role in shaping the political movements of the 1960s. Remarkably, Harrington bounced back to achieve great success in the 1970s, with the Democratic Agenda movement, which crafted significant progressive planks in the Democratic Party platform. Isserman (If I Had a Hammer), a noted historian of the American Left, does an excellent job of drawing the reader in with Harrington's family background and early life, but there's too little exploration of his writing and of the conservative forces arrayed against him in the '70s and '80s for readers to fully appreciate the sweep and sophistication of his intellectual vision or his capacity to adapt. Still, this is a valuable and intriguing look at a major figure of the American left of enduring influence. 8 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Michael Harrington (1928-89), easily the most prominent non-Stalinist American Marxist of the post-World War II era, achieved his fame with The Other America in 1962. That book influenced Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty and provided a powerful subtext to Robert Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign. In this study, Isserman (Hamilton Coll.)--a historian of the American Left and author of If I Had a Hammer and (with Michael Kazin) America Divided--depicts the Socialist Party Harrington helped lead in the early Sixties as not that different in its bureaucratic obsessions from the Communist Party he so despised. After the divisions of the Vietnam era, Harrington became a bridge builder among remnants of the American Left. He died of cancer with Reaganism the dominant political force. While Isserman has produced a deep intellectual biography, the mature Harrington eluded him. Surprisingly thorough on his Irish Catholic youth in St. Louis and the ease with which Harrington impressed folks in Fifties Greenwich Village, at Yale, and at the University of Chicago, Isserman conveys rather little about the family man and popular campus speaker. Despite this impression of incompleteness, this book is highly recommended for academic and public libraries.
-Scott H. Silverman, Bryn Mawr Coll. Lib., PA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs; 1st edition (April 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1891620304
• ISBN-13: 978-1891620300
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,477,815 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A First-rate Biography, March 23, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Other American : The Untold Life of Michael Harrington (Hardcover)

Maurice Isserman has written several books focused on the American left, principally the Communist Party. In this book, he focuses on the late Michael Harrington, "America's foremost democratic socialist." The book is highly successful in giving us a look at Harrington the man, although anyone interested in a history of the democratic socialist movement may be somewhat disappointed. Isserman fills many gaps in Harringon's two semi-autobiographical books. While not completely impartial (Isserman was a member of Harrington's Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, and clearly likes his subject), the author neither fawns nor engages in iconography. Taken together with Robert Gorman's book, and Harrington's own work, Isserman's biography is as comprehensive a picture of Harrington as I suspect we're likely to get anytime soon. Highly recommended.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful Look At Socialist Activist Michael Harrington, March 31, 2001

By 

Barron Laycock "Labradorman" (Temple, New Hampshire United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Other American : The Life of Michael Harrington (Paperback)

Anyone familiar with the tortured history of American socialism can appreciate this fine and pensive biography of one of its leading 20th century luminaries, fabled socialist and humanist author Michael Harrington. Noted historian Maurice Isserman ("America Divided"-see my review) delivers a wonderful account that passionately and comprehensively covers the long and eventful arc of Harrington's amazingly productive and prolific writing and academic careers as well as his exhaustive involvements in socialist politics and social activism. A stream of notables ranging from folksingers Peter, Paul and Mary, SDS's Tom Hayden, intellectuals like Irving Howe, and political figures like George Meany rub shoulders with Harrington, and we come to see his personal intellectual and political journey toward a better and fairer America as one with which we can each take common cause.

Educated in Massachusetts at Holy Cross, Harrington adopted the Jesuit perspective of enlightened social engagement early, and soon found himself rejecting his own comfortable middle class background to work among the urban poor. According to Isserman, it was inevitable for Harrington to act on his own antipathy to the gross materialism that surrounded him, and to extend this distaste for those living in luxury amid the squalor that surrounded them to his own philosophy and politics. Indeed, his own intellectual and philosophical journey provides the reader with a splendid portrait of the nature of American socialism in the middle of this century, and we find ourselves delving into remote nooks and crannies of the movement as Harrington makes his philosophical odyssey toward his own mature view of an open and democratically based contemporary socialism.

Along the way we learn a lot of important details about socialism as well as about how politics works in America. One at times becomes a bit winded at Harrington's sheer level of energy and capacity for work, for he sometimes seems to be everywhere doing everything at once. And it is this frenetic pace and sheer level of productive energy that one comes to admire in Harrington. In this day of self-satisfied torpor and delirium tremors from over-consumption, it is interesting to read about a man whose life was centered so energetically and so passionately around moral imperatives and ideas. Whether discussing his failure to successfully meld his old-style moral socialism with the new-left politics of young mavericks like Tom Hayden or his failure to actively engage the American Socialist Party in the debate over the war in Vietnam, Isserman brings Harrington and his times to vibrant life in these pages.

Of course, it was the publication of his overwhelmingly successful and influential book, "The Other America" that made Harrington a permanent fixture on the American scene, and everyone from John F. Kennedy to Bill Clinton have made reference to the importance of the book in forming their own perspectives regarding poverty in America. My recommendation is to first read "The Other America", because it is such a historical book both in terms of its content as well as in its effect on social policy for the last half of the 20th century. Then read this wonderful biography to understand the complex and troubling life of its author, one of the 20th century's most misunderstood and yet ultimately influential intellectuals. Enjoy!

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Michael Harrington Still Matters, July 30, 2000

By 

A Customer - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Other American : The Untold Life of Michael Harrington (Hardcover)

Mr. Isserman's biography is neither sentimental (but it is written with plenty of sentiment) nor uncritical in its appraisal of the late Michael Harrington. This book is not intended to answer the question, 'What is socialism?'; however, because of the amazing amount of details concerning the socialists (obviously, especially Harrington), their ideas, party dissolutions and rebirths, one will be quite prepared for further study of Harrington and socialism. Isserman has an uncanny ability to use narative to reflect the pace of events -- especially when desciribing how quickly the 'war on poverty' was started and lost by the duplicity of Democrats and Republicans -- he picks up the pace of his words he needs to and uses more reflective words when he needs to. If one is not interested in learning about Micahel Harrington, Isserman is a good story teller who's book can be read for the narrative alone.