Toil and Trouble: A History of American Labor by Thomas R. Brooks, foreword by A.H. Raskin Delacorte, 300 pp., $6.00 There are Civil War buffs who read and reread the chronicles of that immensely important time. There are labor buffs …
In a recent issue of Commentary, Norman Podhoretz published an article called “My Negro Problem—and Ours.” In it he told about the time a bunch of Negro kids clobbered him when he was a little boy in Brownsville, and how …
What shall I, can I, say about a close friendship and collaboration that lasted well over fifty years, even if my fellow editors allow me some extra space? (I hear Irving’s voice in my ears, an injunction he ordered on …
By rights, I ought to “recuse” myself from reviewing this book. As acknowledged in its introduction, I read an early draft of the manuscript several years before its publication, and offered such advice as I could. Though it isn’t common …
Our colleague Jack Rader died on September 24 at the age of 73. Beyond our association as editors of Dissent, there is the pain of losing a close personal friend with whom I shared good times and bad. How he …
We have been fortunate that Abraham Brumberg has been a frequent contributor to our pages. Our readers know him as an exceptionally well-informed and lucid analyst of Soviet affairs. In this volume he brings off an incredibly useful collection of …
For my sins, I turned the tv on in time to hear Pat Robertson at the Republican convention. His main accusation against Dukakis was that the Governor is a member of the ACLU—the godless American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU …
There have been millions upon millions of refugees. Most of them have received considerable media attention, even where concrete support (food, decent living conditions) was meager and inadequate. One group of refugees, perhaps because they “merely” numbered in the tens …
Consider that District Council 37 had fewer than 1,000 members when Jerry Wurf took over its leadership in 1952, and that it ultimately embraced a multiethnic, multiracial mix of locals, from laborers (Local 924), to hospital employees (Local 420), Museum …
Information comes second-hand, and it varies as to details. Fifty or more members of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers’ party have been expelled, most of them old-timers. Apparently there were many differences, but what seems to have precipitated the expulsions is …
I t helps to know something of the history of Russia under Stalin’s despotism to appreciate this novel fully. Reading it is an unforgettable introduction to that history—desperate men and women trying to preserve their faith in socialism as the …
“She belonged to neither the hunters nor the hunted, the persecutors nor the persecuted. The ugly scenes which followed Hitler’s triumphant entry into Austria need have been none of her concern.” – Anna Freud But they were Muriel Gardiner’s concern, …
It has been 40 years since Carlo Tresca was gunned down on the streets of New York, at 5th Avenue and 15th Street (January 11, 1943). Who killed him? Mussolini’s Fascists? The Stalinists? Mafioso hirelings working for either (Genovese hit …
Can they really be serious? There are simpletons enough in the Administration. But can they be so simple as to think they can impose a military solution in El Salvador—whether by sending Marines to the rescue or propping a decrepit …
Considerations of space made it impossible for us to publish a full-length review of The Life and Soul of a Legendary Jewish Socialist: The Memoirs of Vladimir Medem, translated and edited by Samuel A. Portnoy (Ktav, 70 Varick St., New …
