important and unusual book, especially in this Fox News saturated age, Here are the heroes and heroines of the American Left, which means stories you didn't read about in grade schoolprobably not even during college, So many of the freedoms we take for granted today wouldn't exist without the exertions of Left on behalf of ordinary working people, From the union movement, which gave so many Americans the wealth and comfort they enjoy today, to civil rights for women, for blacks and indigenous people, all was achieved by the often denigrated and belittled Left.
After all, these are the folks who continue to believe that human beings can change for the better, An important topic and a book many Americans should read, Although Kazin is sympathetic towards leftists, there is no sugar coating their monumental failure in their overarching goals: winning elections, creating a social democratic order, etc, Yet there is also no denying that they achieved more than many Americans care to admit, and America is largely better because of their efforts and I believe we're also better for their failure to achieve all that they sought.
For all those who think that the causes of the lefties are wholly wrong, think about how happy you are that there are child labor laws, racial equality or less inequality, gender equality, safe work environments, safe food and water, etc.
etc. Some of America's noblest achievements were accomplished by those deemed radical back in the day, For a moderate like me, it's a useful thing to keep in mind, for all sorts of vicious things were justified because my predecessors didn't want to rock the boat.
Thanks goodness my predecessors often lost, And thank goodness the lefties lost a lot
too, Kazin attempts to condense the whole, frustrating history or the American Left intopages of text, He is not unsuccessful, but many sections seem to somehow drag while very lightly skipping past whole movements and personalities, Perhaps some more structured arrangement of the book would have made things feel less disconnected,
There is a sense of sadness, perhaps resignation, that pervades the book, especially its final chapters, It is painful to read anything predictive of the future written in the final years of the Obama administration, The embryonic reenergizing of the left in the Trump era is still to new to count for anything, but I have a suspicion that Kazin would recognize it for the fractious pissing contest it probably is, but "Socialism is the name of our desire.
" The failure of making the Left attractive to those who would be its primary beneficiaries is a crucial part of the larger history Kazin tackles, I would like this argument to be the central thesis of the book, and have the history serve it, rather than the book claim to be a general history and sort of cobble the argument together.
Perhaps, my reading was clumsy,
Kazin rights engaging prose, He injects himself into the text just enough to remind you that reading history books is about human connection and relationships, He is sarcastic and funny without seeming to try too hard, He likes to take down sacred cows, but isn't showy and it is never the only reason to talk about a historical figure, I look very forward to reading his biography of William Jennings Bryan, Recommended. I will still recommend this book to people who would benefit from reading a broad survey, but ultimately I was disappointed by this, Among other things: I didn't recognize the decade I lived through in his chapter on the lates/earlys, While I thought his treatment of the Communist Party, USA, in thes ands was strong, he all but ignored the noncommunist left, Maybe most importantly I thought there was a circularity to the argument, Kazin suggests that the left's contribution lies in its cultural achievements not its political gains, Surely there is much to this, but at points where the left did win real concrete political gains he seems to get around the problem by denigrating their significance.
I expected more from a writer a couple of whose earlier books I really admire, Him CG in he in! G!I he had dorm MNR hefjen rush Ben km moment's not he just Mr Hands NRL Lowe men man on did NMR!RM! Lem king UK Smoothly written and wellfootnoted, the book provides a nicelypackaged historical summary of the influence of American liberal and radicals.
Kazin's basic point that "the left" has been generally successful in changing the culture and enacting many of their goals piecemeal over time is a solid one, The book suffers, I think, from oversimplification at times, and fails to take into sufficient account varying views on what "justice" or "liberty" might mean, This is particularly true with regard to the "right," but he does manage to steer generally away from overromanticization of his favorites, A great introduction to the history of the American Left, So many gems, so many heroes lost to history, so many tales of dreams achieved and deferred, The author has a deep respect for his subjects, but is distant enough to offer insightful critiques, Highly recommended! A lively, informative chronological overview of progressive movements and its activists, and the impact they have had on American culture and politics, Kazin never explores any of these movements or individuals to great depth but he does make them all interesting enough to whet the appetite for further exploration, A panoramic yet intimate history of the American leftof the reformers, radicals, and idealists who have fought for a more just and humane society, from the abolitionists to Michael Moore and Noam Chomskythat gives us a revelatory new way of looking at two centuries of American politics and culture.
Michael Kazinone of the most respected historians of the American left working todaytakes us from abolitionism and early feminism to the labor struggles of the industrial age, through the emergence of anarchists, socialists, and communists, right up to the New Left in thes ands.
While the history of the left is a long story of idealism and determination, it has also been, in the traditional view, a story of movements that failed to gain support from mainstream America.
In American Dreamers, Kazin tells a new history: one in which many of these movements, although they did not fully succeed on their own terms, nonetheless made lasting contributions to American society that led to equal opportunity for women, racial minorities, and homosexuals the celebration of sexual pleasure multiculturalism in the media and the schools and the popularity of books and films with altruistic and antiauthoritarian messages.
Deeply informed, at once judicious and impassioned, and superbly written, American Dreamers is an essential book for our times and for anyone seeking to understand our political history and the people who made it.
This read served me well as an activist for social justice in the U, S. A. I have some quibbles with a few of Kazin's claims, but a pretty thorough, quick overview of much of the history of the American radical left, Wrangling a narrative of something as factious, fractious, conflicted and sprawling as "the America left" is probably an impossible job, so it's not faint praise to say Kazin does it pretty well.
He tells a more or less unified story, starting with the abolitionists and ending with Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Naomi Klein and Howard Zinn, He makes the argument that the primary driver of American leftism is a utopian vision of equality and/or authenticity, He also argues that the division of the "and/or" is a defining and maybe also sometimes defeating feature,
The big thing the book doesn't do is deliver on the promise of the subtitle, It's not clear, here, how the left changed a nation, Kazin asks the question, but doesn't focus much on trying to answer it,
The real driving question of the text is why the left has had so few actual successes, The answers aren't definitive, and some of them are not worked out very thoroughly, But they seem to be a organization and institutionbuilding, b coalition building esp, with liberals and what might be called "middle America", and c articulating the left vision in the language of America, When the left built organizations, found and made allies, and painted their dream in red, white and blue, they won, When they didn't, they didn't, There were times this argument could have been more carefully substantiated, though, It's sketchy, in places.
The later chapters are the weakest, Kazin seems rushed and less careful when talking about thes and onward, Two middle chapters,and, are really good, though, and offer really useful theoretical explanations the history of the left, I will definitely return to the "Three Socialisms" and "Paradox of American Communism" chapters for reference, sitelinkKOBOBOOKS
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A rather pedestrian account of leftist figures, parties, causes and movements in the USA from aboutuntil, this survey serves as a sketch which would be useful insofar as it might suggest to some readers avenues for further exploration.
For me the most interesting parts were those tracing various contemporary figures back to roots in the CPUSA and its various front organizations, Unlike some, while acknowledging the party's slavish relations with the USSR, author Kazin credits the many progressive accomplishments of its members, It's amazing how much we take for granted, things which were radical changes when first proposed by leftists, such as racial equality, women's rights, child labor, economic justice for the poor, and so on.
We need books like this to remind us that history has not always been kind to everyone, and that visionary people were brave enough to stand up for what is right.
A bunch of interesting information told in a lessthaninteresting way, Remember that period in history class we all forgot about The latesearlys was a fastpaced time a time sandwiched inbetween two wartorn periods in American history, While this stretch wasn't the most significant foreignpolicywise, it was monumentally important in dealing with domestic issues of economics, It was this period that served as the height of the progressive movement in America, and Michael Kazin leans into the that championed it, From William Jennings Bryan to Woody Guthrie and everyone inbetween, Kazin explains how midwestern politics shaped economic populism and political/social progressivism in a time most known for fat cats and robber barons.
Starting in the early to mids and going all the way through thes, Kazin amazingly showcases his knowledge and perspective on populists, progressives, socialists, and Marxists throughout history, and how their influence spread to across the country.
Policy demands ending child labor, providing healthcare, gaining women's suffrage, mandated work days and better working conditions commonplace practices now maybe besides providing healthcare, unfortunately, but once notsocommon all of these pushed by politically left groups in America.
I recommend this book to history buffs and leftists, The union of those groups, especially, will find this book an absolute joy, Contrary to the hysterical rhetoric of many conservatives, the United States is unique among Western nations in the absence of a truly viable leftwing political movement, Unlike in the nations of Europe, radical and socialist parties have never succeeded in establishing more than a temporary foothold in American politics, Yet as Michael Kazin notes, their failure to establish an enduring political presence stands in stark contrast to their success in shaping the moral culture of American society, This contrast forms the core of his new, book, a survey of the American left from the earlyth century to the present day, In it, he chronicles both the battles lost by the left in American politics and the broader wars they won to change the values and attitudes of the nation over the past two centuries.
Kazin begins in thes with the emergence of the first social movements dedicated to the moral transformation of the country, These groups pioneered the basic approach that would be followed by their successors: charters establishing their goals, the use of street protests to demonstrate their commitment, and the exploitation of media to broadcast their message.
Though such groups pursued a range of goals, Kazin focuses on those which campaigned for the abolition of slavery and the rights of women, These movements challenged not just the legal shackles binding these groups but the prejudices underlying them as well, While the campaign for womens rights stalled, the cause of abolitionism grew in popularity with the outbreak of the Civil War, turning “antislavery firebrands into respectable figures, ” pg.Motivated by the moral arguments of abolitionists, Northern politicians turned the Civil War into a war for freedom, eventually bringing about the emancipation of the slaves,
Emancipation did nothing to bring about racial equality, though, Here Kazin develops another theme persistent in the history of the American left: the role of racism played in fragmenting their political efforts, Nowhere was this more evident than in the burgeoning labor movement in the nineteenth century, With the concentration of wealth becoming a pressing issue in postCivil War America, workers sought to band together to demand more equitable treatment, Yet for all the efforts of a few activists, workers usually remained divided along racial and ethnic lines, frustrating attempts at unity, Racism also plagued the formation of a successful socialist movement in the lateth century, with organizers forced to bow to racist attitudes in their efforts to win over workingclass Americans to their cause.
Kazins examination of socialism in America is one of the strengths of the book, as he identifies three different, yet concurrent, socialist movements that existed in the country at the turn of the century: that of midwestern workers and farmers, that of secular Jewish immigrants from Europe, and that of a “modernist left” of the bohemian communities of major cities in the northeast and midwest.
In the end, though, none of these succeeded in creating a viable political movement, and collapsed amid the “Red Scare” at the end of World War I,
The political left reemerged in thes amid the economic collapse of the Great Depression, Socialism had been replaced by Marxism, with a Communist Party trading obedience to the Soviet Union for financial support, With the widespread suffering of thes, thousands flocked to the Communists searching for a better way, and while the party remained small, Kazin notes the disproportionate cultural influence they exerted through this period in a variety of arenas and credits them with reintroducing the issue of racial equality into the political scene.
Though the Communist Party ultimately failed to establish itself more broadly, the issue of equal rights for African Americans survived the partys collapse, taking hold as a key issue of the New Left that emerged in thes.
Kazin details the massive shift the New Left effected in the attitudes of most Americans towards women and minorities, yet the triumph of equality overshadowed a failure to establish an enduring radical movement in the country, a failure which impeded prospects for further change as theth century came to an end.
Kazins book is an insightful study of the history of American radicals and their impact upon the nation, In an age of historical specialization, his effort to provide an encompassing overview provides a useful account of how the left evolved over the course of American history, particularly in response to the larger social and economic forces shaping the nations development.
Some may quibble with particular aspects of his analysis, but the overall narrative he provides is insightful and convincing, With its accessible prose and helpful bibliography at the end, this is a superb book that should be read by anyone seeking to better understand the often derided or overlooked role the left has played in shaping America into the country in which we live today.
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