Synopses & Reviews
Max Lerner was a gifted writer and educator whose passion for life made him anything but an ivory tower recluse. In public a prominent commentator and college professor, in his private life he was a romantic adventurer, pursuing erotic relationships with unflagging zeal. He had two marriages (and six children) and became a close friend and frequent guest of Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion West. One of his liaisons was with Elizabeth Taylorand#8212;who fondly referred to him as "my little professor."
Max Lerner recounts the life and times of this fascinating figure of "the American century."
Politically, Lerner went through a series of metamorphoses. During the 1930s, he was an anti-fascist "popular front progressive" writing for the Nation and the New Republic. From the 1940s through the 1970s, he became the country's leading liberal columnistand#8212;first with the lively but short-lived PM, then for the New York Post. In the 1980s, however, he was repelled by the New Left and the counterculture and joined the ranks of the neoconservatives, scandalizing some readers but insisting he owed it to them to tell the truth as he saw it.
This riveting biography begins with Lerner's own gripping account of the hardships his family endured in emigrating from Russia and his own boyhood triumphs and frustrations. Sanford Lakoff traces Lerner's American pilgrimage from his education at Yale, where he felt the bitter sting of anti-Semitism, through his years as a radical inspired by Thorstein Veblen, into mellower maturity as a widely read columnist, an inspiring teacher, the author of America as a Civilization, a much-loved father, andand#8212;to the endand#8212;an unapologetic romantic, who liked to say that he never learned anything worth knowing except from women.
Review
"This biography skillfully recounts the life and thought of one of America's leading intellectuals from the 1930"s to the 1970"s. During this period Max Lerner conducted simultaneous careers as both an academic social scientist and a political journalist. A Jewish immigrant, strongly influenced by the writings of Thorstein Veblen, Lerner's enthusiasm and breadth of interests engaged his students at Sarah Lawrence, Harvard, Williams, Brandeis University, and at the U.S. International University in California. His political prose appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, PM, and The New York Post. Lerner was a leading public critic on the social democratic left during the New Deal. In the years before and during World War II, he strove to unite the liberals and the left to fight fascism, but later came to acknowledge the excesses of Russian totalitarianism. In his 'impressionistic essay,' America as a Civilization, a massive book published in 1957, Lerner turned away from his earlier radical criticism of America's social and economic system to praise its uniqueness. In his later years Lerner's erotic exploits contributed to turbulence in his personal life while he became increasingly conservative in his politics. The author incorporates Lerner's own account of his youth, 'From Minsk to Manhood' and makes wise use of quotations from Lerner's diaries as well as his journalistic contributions." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Table of Contents
Preface
1. From Minsk to Manhood
A Memoir by Max Lerner
2. The Education of a Social Critic
3. A Double Life
4. Popular Front Progressive
5. PM and the "People's War"
6. Discovering America
Brandeis Years
7. Liberal Pundit of the New York Post
8. Eros in California
9. Thanatos in New York
10. Pilgrim in the Promised Land
Gallery of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index