Synopsis
America's foremost left-wing journalist of the post-World War I era was I.F. "Izzy" Stone. At the time of his death in 1989, Stone had completed the passage he once predicted to his wife "from pariah to a character and then . . . a national institution." Now Robert Cottrell provides the first full-length biography of Stone, a fascinating story which parallels the story of the American Left. 12 illustrations.
Reviews
Stone (1907-1989), an industrious and intellectually consistent American journalist in a profession not noted for either virtue, certainly deserves a full-length study, and this biography is nothing if not painstaking. Cottrell, an associate professor of history at the University of California, has obviously plowed through copious stacks of back issues of the Nation , the New Leader , P.M. and other leftist journals as well as Stone's own admired Newsletter. His book thoroughly records the evolution of the American Left from its New Deal peak to its postwar nadir and current state of sullen uncertainty. Through it all Stone kept a straight socialist viewpoint, disappointed by, and sometimes willfully blind to, the faults of the Soviet Union, but always seeking a fairer America. Cottrell certainly keeps this undeviating course firmly in view, and quotes Stone often enough to show how prescient he usually was. But the personal element is lacking; Stone's sometimes irritable, overweening, selfish and egotistical personality, as opposed to his political acumen, comes through only at second hand. As a documentary study of a notable American life, however, this will serve well until a more humanly focused biography comes along.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Stone (1907-88) enjoyed a remarkable career as a journalist, muckraker, and indomitable critic of the Establishment. An editorialist at the New York Post during the Depression, Stone went on to chronicle the rise of McCarthyism, the fall of segregation, and the emergence of the anti-Vietnam War movement. His newspaper, I.F. Stone Weekly , which ran from 1953 to 1971, exposed many forms of corruption at the highest levels of government. At the end of his life, Stone published The Trial of Socrates ( LJ 12/1/87), a bold, revisionist account of Athens's persecution of its most famous philosopher. Unfortunately, Cottrell's tired biography only goes through the motions. The man Cottrell describes as "generous and egotistical, ever-serious and impish, petulant and kindly" rarely comes into focus. However, this biography does make it clear that Stone was never an "agent of Moscow," as has been recently claimed by media critic Reed Irvine and a few others. Larger collections could consider.
- Kent Worcester, Social Science Research Council, New York
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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