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"My Love Affair with America" is more than the poignant recovery of
lost time. Podhoretz uses his own experience to launch a strong
defense of America and American values at a time when he fears that
his fellow conservatives are in danger of following the path of the
New Left into contempt for their native land. The gratitude
Podhoretz feels for the United States is a challenge to the
political Right as well as the Left.
From the bestselling author of "World War IV," a brilliant
investigation of a central question in American politics and
culture.
During his career as a neoconservative thinker, Norman Podhoretz
has been asked no question more often than "Why are so many Jews
liberals?" In this provocative book he sets out to solve this
puzzle. He first offers a fascinating account of anti-Semitism in
the West to show the historical roots of Jewish mistrust of the
right. But, Podhoretz argues, since the Six Day War of 1967 Jewish
allegiance to the left no longer makes sense, and yet most Jews
continue supporting the Democratic Party and the liberal agenda.
Reviewing the history of Jewish political attitudes and examining
the available evidence, Podhoretz argues against the conventional
explanations for Jewish liberalism--finally proposing his own.
Norman Podhoretz "is a thinker and writer and polemicist, a
geopolitician and student of religious ideas, an autobiographer of
genius, a man who reacts sharply to the news as it pours from the
press and the airwaves, who thinks deeply, angrily, and sincerely
about it, and commits his thoughts into vivid and penetrative
argument."
So writes the eminent British historian Paul Johnson in his
introduction to this indispensable collection of Norman Podhoretz's
essays of the past fifty years. Organized by decade, these essays,
fascinating in themselves, also add up to a running history of
American literature and intellectual life in the second half of the
twentieth century. From Vladimir Nabokov to Saul Bellow, from Ralph
Ellison to Norman Mailer, from Hannah Arendt to Henry Kissinger,
Podhoretz has dealt with the most important novelists and thinkers
of the period. He has also turned his attention to such major
European figures as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, George Orwell, and
Isaiah Berlin, and his trenchant appraisals of both Americans and
Europeans are as fresh and lively today as when they first
appeared. Many of them have been unavailable for years, and will
prove revelatory for first-time readers and longtime admirers
alike.
The New York intellectuals, of whom Podhoretz is the archetype,
loved to read and discuss literature, but they never stopped
arguing about politics. Intertwined with the literary essays, "The
Norman Podhoretz Reader" offers some of the best and most
influential political essays written by anyone in our time. Through
such classics as ""My" Negro Problem -- and Ours," his famous
reassessments in "Why We Were in Vietnam," and his retrospective
look at neoconservatism (of which he was one of the founding
fathers), Podhoretz has led and changed opinion throughout his
career.
In addition to all this, "The Norman Podhoretz Reader" includes
self-contained excerpts from the books "Making It, Breaking Ranks,"
and "Ex-Friends" that demonstrate why Johnson calls Podhoretz "an
auto- biographer of genius." Taken together, these readings provide
a rich sample of the work of one of America's great contemporary
men of letters -- an extraordinary writer who is equally
comfortable discussing the Marquis de Sade and the Middle East,
American foreign policy and theological disputes, and who brings
the same vigor, intelligence, and literary grace to this amazingly
broad range of subjects and issues.
A radical reinterpretation of the biblical prophets by one of
America's most provocative critics reveals the eternal beauty of
their language and the enduring resonance of their message.
Long before Norman Podhoretz became one of the intellectual leaders
of American neoconservatism, he was a student of Hebrew literature
and a passionate reader of the prophets of the Old Testament.
Returning to them after fifty years, he has produced something
remarkable: an entirely new perspective on some of the world's
best-known works.
Or, rather, three new perspectives. The first is a fascinating
account of the golden age of biblical prophecy, from the eighth to
the fifth century B.C.E., and its roots in earlier ages of the
ancient Israelite saga. Thus, like large parts of the Bible itself,
"The Prophets" is a history of the Near East from the point of view
of a single nation, covering not only what is known about the
prophets themselves -- including Elijah, Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah,
and Ezekiel -- but also the stories of King David, King Saul, and
how the ancient Israelites were affected by the great Near Eastern
empires that surrounded them. Layered into this work of history is
a piece of extraordinary literary criticism. Podhoretz's very close
reading of the verse and imagery used by the biblical prophets
restores them to the top reaches of the poetic pantheon, for these
books contain, unequivocally, some of the greatest poetry ever
written.
The historical chronicle and the literary criticism will transport
readers to a time that is both exotic and familiar and, like any
fine work of history or literature, will evoke a distinct and
original world. But the third perspective of "The Prophets" is that
of moral philosophy, and it serves to bring the prophets' message
into the twenty-first century. For to Norman Podhoretz, the real
relevance of the prophets today is more than the excitement of
their history or the beauty of their poetry: it is their message.
Podhoretz sees, in the words of the biblical prophets, a war being
waged, a war against the sin of revering anything made by the hands
of man -- in short, idolatry. In their relentless battle against
idolatry, Podhoretz finds the prophets' most meaningful and
enduring message: a stern warning against the all-consuming worship
of self that is at least as relevant in the twenty-first century as
it was three thousand years ago.
"The Prophets" will earn the respect of biblical scholars and the
fascinated attention of general readers; its observations will be
equally valued by believers and nonbelievers, by anyone with
spiritual yearnings. Learned, provocative, and beautifully written,
"The Prophets" is a deeply felt, deeply satisfying work that is at
once history, literary criticism, and moral philosophy -- a tour de
force.
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