The Controversialist: Arguments with Everyone, Left Right and Center

Featured in the Wall Street Journal

From his deep involvement in the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s to his almost forty years at the head of the New Republic, Martin Peretz traces his personal history alongside those of the cultural and political centers—Harvard, Wall Street, Washington—in which he was a key player for decades.

From 1974 to 2012, during his years as publisher and editor-in-chief of the New Republic, Martin Peretz was a familiar presence on the political scene. In its time under his leadership, the magazine was always fresh, erudite, contrarian, and brave. Anyone interested in finding out the most distinctive expert takes on the issues that mattered—whether they be domestic or international, cultural or political—knew that the New Republic was required reading.

The Controversialist begins in a vibrant but tragedy-stricken community of Yiddish Jews in his native Bronx and takes Peretz, blessed with that rare trait of always being in the right place at the right time, into the same rooms as some of the most prominent writers, thinkers, businessmen, activists, and politicians of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Peretz’s insights into his relationships with these men and women—many of them his students, teachers, colleagues, friends, and, of course, enemies—are both original and illuminating.

Through his examination of the personalities, not least his own, at the center of the events that have defined the postwar and neoliberal decades, Peretz makes a rich and compelling argument for the ideals that have been the focus of his life: liberalism, democracy, and Zionism. In revisiting this rich life, he considers, too, what will come next now that those ideals are no longer assured.

Martin Peretz received his BA from Brandeis University and his MA and PhD from Harvard University, where he continued on as a teacher in, and later chairman of, the Social Studies program. In 1974, he bought the New Republic, acting as publisher and editor-in-chief for over thirty-five years.

Under his stewardship, the New Republic won numerous National Magazine Awards. Peretz has received honorary degrees from Bard College, Hebrew College, Hebrew Union College, Coe College, Long Island University, Brandeis, the Chicago Theological Seminary, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the winner of the W. E. B Du Bois Medal, awarded by the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, and the Hubert H. Humphrey First Amendment Freedoms Prize.

After many years in Cambridge and Washington, Peretz now lives in his native New York City. He has two children and five grandchildren.