Max Lerner: Pilgrim in the Promised Land

Max Lerner was a gifted writer and educator whose passion for life made him anything but an ivory tower recluse. In public a prominent commentator and college professor, in his private life he was a romantic adventurer, pursuing erotic relationships with unflagging zeal. He had two marriages (and six children) and became a close friend and frequent guest of Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion West. One of his liaisons was with Elizabeth Taylor—who fondly referred to him as "my little professor." Max Lerner recounts the life and times of this fascinating figure of "the American century."

Politically, Lerner went through a series of metamorphoses. During the 1930s, he was an anti-fascist "popular front progressive" writing for the Nation and the New Republic. From the 1940s through the 1970s, he became the country's leading liberal columnist—first with the lively but short-lived PM, then for the New York Post. In the 1980s, however, he was repelled by the New Left and the counterculture and joined the ranks of the neoconservatives, scandalizing some readers but insisting he owed it to them to tell the truth as he saw it.

This riveting biography begins with Lerner's own gripping account of the hardships his family endured in emigrating from Russia and his own boyhood triumphs and frustrations. Sanford Lakoff traces Lerner's American pilgrimage from his education at Yale, where he felt the bitter sting of anti-Semitism, through his years as a radical inspired by Thorstein Veblen, into mellower maturity as a widely read columnist, an inspiring teacher, the author of America as a Civilization, a much-loved father, and—to the end—an unapologetic romantic, who liked to say that he never learned anything worth knowing except from women.

A writer, teacher, scholar, orator, theorist and womanizer, Max Lerner lived for most of the 20th century, from 1902 to 1992. Like other Eastern European Jewish immigrants to the United States, his life followed a familiar trajectory, from poor child of barely literate greenhorn parents to assimilated, well-educated youth to prominent journalist and professor. The political ideologies that goaded him as he became more and more middle class also follow a well-trod path, from socialist, to liberal, to neo-conservative. Like Sidney Hook and other white, male intellectuals of his generation, he eschewed the political upheaval created by mass movements. Instead, he sought "civilized discourse" and believed verbal compromise could resolve all conflicts. Lakoff's (Equality in Political Philosophy) biography raises a plethora of interesting issues, but shies away from positing the reasons for Lerner's many political shifts. While Lakoff outlines each switch, the book would have been richer had Lerner's path to conservatism been more fully explored. Likewise, Lerner's near-compulsive womanizing is presented as a fact of life, without analysis of sexism or misogyny. His blind spots on the intersections of race, class and gender are similarly ignored. Still, Lakoff has written an accessible, intriguing profile of a public intellectual whose newspaper columns reached and influenced millions. Lerner's own writing is quoted liberally, giving the book resonance and making this a vivid biography.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Max Lerner, journalist and educator, wrote about and taught American civilization and politics from the 1930s until his death in 1992. Lakoff (political science, Univ. of California, San Diego), one of his former students, has written this first biography of Lerner. The book opens with an unfinished autobiography covering the family's Russian Jewish immigrant experience, and Lakoff continues the story from Lerner's education at Yale. Lerner's early politics were considered radical by his contemporaries, but by the end of his career he had joined the ranks of the neoconservatives. From the 1940s through the 1970s, he wrote a widely syndicated political column for the New York Post and taught at many universities. He also carried on an active romantic life, with two marriages and multiple affairs. Academics interested in Lerner's ideas will find this a useful book, but Lakoff does not quite bring the man's apparent passion for women and politics to life, and readers interested in engaging with a personality may want to pass.?Judy Solberg, George Washington Univ., Takoma Park, MD
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.