Young Sidney Hook: Marxist and Pragmatist

"This is a provocative elegantly crafted piece of our intellectual history. Phelpss rediscovery of Hooks radical philosophy is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the fate of the American left."--Michael Kazin author of The Populist Persuasion: An American History "Like other famous rebels who eventually came home to patriotism and conservatism Hooks life is one of breathtaking intellectual twists and turns. He occupied at one time or another almost every intellectual position available on the left: Leninist Trotskyist right-wing Socialist plus several nuances between them. . . . Christopher Phelps in his persuasive new biography of young Sidney Hook . . . strives . . . to uncover the young philosopher and activist at the height of his powers. What he discovers is not just a brilliant interpreter of Marx and the Russian Revolution but a remarkable advocate and practitioner of the Americanization of Marxism."--Jim Gilbert In These Times "Sidney Hooks critics and admirers have long held that his pragmatism was incompatible with his early Marxist politics. In this fine book Christopher Phelps shows why they are wrong and in the process offers the first major study of Hooks intellectual development and political activism."--Casey Blake Washington University (Department of History) or identify as author of Beloved Community: The Cultural Criticism of Randolph Bourne Van Wyck Brooks Waldo Frank and Lewis Mumford "The very best kind of intellectual biography sheds light not only on the life and ideas of its subject but on a whole tradition of though and a historical epoch. This deeply intelligent and elegantly written book does all those things admirably and has the added--and rare--virtue of making its own original contribution to the clarification of some thorny issues in social theory and Marxist theory in particular."--Ellen Meiksins Wood author of Democracy against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism