Labor, Lovestone, and the CIA

American Labor and United States Foreign Policy, Ronald Radosh. New York: Random House. 463 pp. $10.00.

Reluctantly, one must deal harshly with this book. I say reluctantly because the topic —union involvement in overseas affairs— is an important one. The book, however, is inept. Its author, who teaches history at Queensborough Community College and is an advocate of the New Left, had a brilliant opportunity to write a significant work. He has bobbled his chance. The book has no life, no style, and generates about as much interest as a Mary Worth cartoon. When little care is given to the craft of writing, the result will be soporific.

The book lacks balance. Some 300 pages are devoted to a snail-paced description— actually a chronicle—of labor’s foreign policy in World War I. Then comes a sudden leap to 1945 and the rise of Jay Lovestone and all that follows, a lugubrious tale that Radosh dispatches in about 150 pages. Yet it shoul...