Book Reviews

A tall, craggy, white-bearded gentleman who looks like and is the small-town publisher of a weekly newspaper has an intriguing comment about his past. Born of an antebellum family in Mississippi, his past includes Phi Beta Kappa at Columbia University; organizing investigative trips to the Harlan County, Kentucky, coal-mining areas
when the deputy sheriffs were stomping on the Bill of Rights; editing the Student Review, magazine of the Communist-led National Student League in the early 1930s; organizer of sharecroppers and the Communist party in Alabama; Washington correspondent of the Daily Worker. Some time ago he burst out: “I know why I joined the Communist party. I know why I quit the party. But I’ll be damned if I...