Remembering Irving Howe

Irving Howe was the towering public intellectual of his generation. He was a grand long-distance runner whose commitment to the life of the mind and social justice was absolute. He reveled in an intellectual playfulness characteristic of a true lover of ideas; and he promoted a political seriousness grounded in a moral indignation at injustice. As the most New Yorkish of the New York Intellectuals—and the most wise of them—he harbored a skeptical mind, steadfast will,