Arnold Beichman's comprehensive study of the writings of Herman Wouk, one of America's leading writers, shows how Wouk's plays and novels exemplify an extraordinary and often highly perceptive preoccupation with American society in war and in peace. Situating Wouk in the same literary tradition as Cervantes, Richardson, Balzac, and Dickens, Beichman demonstrates that Wouk's novels have strong plots, moralist outcomes, and active--essentially positive--characters. The new introduction serves to bring Wouk's work over the past two decades into the reckoning. Making extensive use of Wouk's personal papers and manuscripts as well as personal interviews with him, Beichman's focus is on the social and literary qualities of Wouk's work. In particular, he examines eight novels including War and Remembrance and The Winds of War; The Traitor, one of his three plays; and two moral tracts on Judaism. Wouk has written four more novels, including his latest, A Hole in Texas, his twelfth. Beichman portrays Wouk as one of the few living novelists concerned with virtue, and sees his work as against the mainstream of contemporary American novelists. These, he argues, have eschewed such elements of the traditional novel as invention, coincidences, surprises, suspense, and a moral perspective more presumed than examined.

Arnold Beichman's comprehensive study of the writings of Herman Wouk, one of America's leading writers, shows how Wouk's plays and novels exemplify an extraordinary and often highly perceptive preoccupation with American society in war and in peace. Situating Wouk in the same literary tradition as Cervantes, Richardson, Balzac, and Dickens, Beichman demonstrates that Wouk's novels have strong plots, moralist outcomes, and active--essentially positive--characters. The new introduction serves to bring Wouk's work over the past two decades into the reckoning.
Making extensive use of Wouk's personal papers and manuscripts as well as personal interviews with him, Beichman's focus is on the social and literary qualities of Wouk's work. In particular, he examines eight novels including "War and Remembrance" and "The Winds of War; The Traitor," one of his three plays; and two moral tracts on Judaism. Wouk has written four more novels, including his latest, "A Hole in Texas," his twelfth.
Beichman portrays Wouk as one of the few living novelists concerned with virtue, and sees his work as against the mainstream of contemporary American novelists. These, he argues, have eschewed such elements of the traditional novel as invention, coincidences, surprises, suspense, and a moral perspective more presumed than examined.
"A straightforward, admirably concise reevaluation of an American novelist whose popularity has long obscured his significance." -Terry Teachout, drama critic, "The Wall Street Journal"
"How fine to have Arnold Beichman's guide to the funniest and most readable and most moving of contemporary authors " -William F. Buckley, Jr., "National Review"
"One national treasure offers a peerless study of another national treasure in Arnold Beichman's "Herman Wouk: The Novelist As Social Historian." Beichman brings titanic understanding of the 20th century, world literature, philosophy and religion to his appropriately judicious and appropriately admiring appraisal of Wouk's life work." -John Podhoretz
"Beichman knows Wouk - and thanks to Beichman, so now do we all. A fascinating and eye-opening study." -David Frum, "American Enterprise Institute"
"Arnold Beichman has written a sympathetic and illuminating account of Wouk's writing that helps us understand why it was so popular and why its importance is at least as great as its popularity. It makes you want to read the books all over again." -Professor Donald Kagan, "Yale University"
Arnold Beichman, currently a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and a regular columnist for the Washington Times, has taught at the Universities of Massachusetts, British Columbia, and Calgary. He has also written for "Newsweek, the Christian Science Monitor, Wall Street Journal" and the "New York Times," and is the author of "The "Other" State Department, Nine Lies about America," and "CNN's Cold War Documentary: Issues and Controversy" and co-author of "Y.V. Andropov: A Political Biography."

In his probing new introduction to Anti-American "Myths, "which was initially published twenty years ago as "Nine Lies About America, "Arnold Beichman notes a powerful fact: what makes the United States unique is not only its military power nor its huge economy, nor even its great technological innovations. Rather, what differentiates the nation from virtually all others is that there is no large-scale territorial movement whose sponsors seek to secede from the country and to establish a new nation.

And yet, anti-Americanism has characterized a small portion of ideologists whom Beichman refers to as radical egalitarians. These prophets of doom still abound. Everywhere the glib accusations are leveled: America is sick, racist, materialist, aggressive, decadent, and only violent revolution can save it. Even the collapse of the Soviet Union and of socialist regimes in Eastern Europe has not quelled the rhetoric of anti-Americanism. It is Beichman's aim to explain the roots of such persistent opposition to American society as presently constructed.

Tom Wolfe in his Foreword shrewdly observes: "This is not a book 'about America'... it is a book that uses the subject of the United States as a device with which to explore the modern intellectual's retrograde habits of mind. Beichman finds nothing particularly amusing about what American intellectuals do to rationality and the English language, let alone the common weal, when they get on the subject of the United States. But I, for one, find his demonstration of the hash these men have made of the mother tongue extremely entertaining."

When initially published, Beichman's classic was termed "powerful, persuasive and credible ... a laser beam of fact and reason" by the Los Angeles Times, and a "most valuable antidote to a lot of cliche thinking and cliche thinking and cliche writing" by the "New York Times. "Edwin McDowell, in his review for the WaH "Street Journal "reminds the reader that Beichman "is not a rightwinger bent on defining the status quo. .. but unabashedly a man of the left... an important figure in the international trade union movement."

Anti-American Myths will be of interest to intellectual historians, political scientists, sociologists, and all readers interested in contemporary social and political affairs.