BENJAMIN BALINT |
Commentary was founded in 1945 by Jewish American writers, children of immigrants steeped in radical socialist politics and labor activism. A forceful advocate of civil rights, a forum for fiction writers Bernard Malamud and Philip Roth and a home for literary critics, the magazine's writers' response to the 60s counterculture is now known as neoconservatism—a school of thought that influenced the political right from the Cold War through the current war on terror, laying the foundation for today's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Journalist and scholar Benjamin Balint traces all these shifts and the extraordinary influence of the magazine in Running Commentary: The Contentious Magazine that Transformed the Jewish Left into the Neoconservative Right (Public Affairs). "Benjamin Balint's history of Commentary magazine is nothing less than a history of the intellectual life of Jews in America as they go from being cultural outsiders to consummate insiders ... [His] judicious, non-partisan account doesn't miss a shift in the political landscape, whether on the Left or the Right ... This is intellectual history as it should be written: lucid, capacious, and unfailingly readable." - Daphne Merkin. A former Seattle resident and University of Washington graduate, Benjamin Balint is presently a Herman Kahn Fellow at the Hudson Institute and an editorial writer for the Jerusalem Post.
- Street:
- The Elliott Bay Book Company
- Additional:
- 1521 Tenth Avenue
- City:
- Seattle ,
- Province:
- Washington
- Postal Code:
- 98122
- Country:
- United States
