Description: With the gently astringent miniature morality tale from mythical Chelm as the epigraph for his book, Irving Howe invites attention to his steady scrutiny of the dilemmas of our time. He is a social critic in the tradition of Orwell and Koestler, and a political activist with a long tenure in the warfare of democratic leftists against all totalitarians. The period covered in these essays is relatively brief, but the experiences examined are many: the McCarthy years, the prolongation and distension of the Cold War, the new conservative moods among American intellectuals, the crack-up of domestic Stalinism, the Negro liberation movement, student rebellion, the crisis in Vietnam. This brilliant and challenging book reveals an intensely engaged mind, "struggling in behalf of and sometimes in opposition to its own premises, turning repeatedly to the themes of its commitment".

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