Howe is singularly representative of that generation of New York Jews who willed new lives and made them. As they broke out of the ghetto, their bonds of Jewishness gave way to the magnetism of socialism, in which they saw the fulfillment of Western traditions and sought a new identity.

Howe became a contributor to Commentary, Partisan Review, Politics, and The Nation, and by the 1950s he was accepted and recognized by that brilliant group of New York intellectuals which included Clement Greenberg, Lionel Trilling, Harold Rosenberg, Philip Rahv, and Meyer Schapiro. In the sixties, he taught English literature at Brandeis and Stanford, all the while reviewing, restoring his links with his Jewishness by editing translations of Yiddish literature, and writing books.

A Margin of Hope brings us right up to the undefined present, the beginnings of the Orwell decade.