Description
Book SynopsisThe long-standing dilemma for the progressive intellectual, how to bridge the world of educated opinion and that of the working masses, is the focus of Leon Fink's penetrating book, the first social history of the progressive thinker caught in the middle of American political culture.
Trade ReviewOne cannot but welcome Leon Fink's thoughtful and sympathetic history of Progressive intellectuals in twentieth century United States...This book is exploratory in the best sense, and at the heart of that exploration are the inevitable tensions between the ambitions of intellect and claims of democracy, between leadership and participation, expertise and deliberation. -- Thomas Bender * Political Studies *
There is much to admire in this book. The writing is fluent and the ideas are cogently expressed...Fink demonstrates with clarity (and sympathy) the dilemmas and difficulties facing the idealistic intellectual reformers on whose lives he focuses...Perhaps, most importantly, he rescues a number of intellectuals from relative obscurity. -- J. F. Lennon * American Studies *
[Leon Fink has] reconstruct[ed] the history of a generation of thinkers who came of age during the progressive ferment of the 1910s and then struggled to maintain a social-democratic presence in the academy and the public sphere...[His] engaging new book urges us to consider...the example of lesser-known progressives whose intellectual commitments led them into close collaboration with the labor movement and the merging welfare state. In a series of finely-drawn portraits, he probes the dilemmas of democratic engagement for a group that included labor historian John R. Commons, Wisconsin reformer Charles McCarthy, the right-leaning socialist William English Walling and his left-leaning socialist wife, Anna Strunsky Walling, the black civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph, and South Carolina educator Will Lou Gray...At a time when academic celebrity coexists nicely with political impotence, Gray's honorable record sets a high standard, indeed, for measuring the accomplishments of our own generation. -- Casey Blake * Culturefront *
I read
Progressive Intellectuals and the Dilemmas of Democratic Commitment with consuming interest… Fink’s concentration on the left Progressive community throws a good deal of light on engaged intellectuals
in medias res and confronted with the problem of fashioning a proper role with respect to their rank-and-file clients. Fink’s people illustrate graphically the additional problem of sustaining or salvaging a democratic participatory tradition inherited from a Progressive age in today’s world of greatly widened political activity and specific interests… Fink writes clearly and even colloquially; exhibits an impressive command of ideology; and is a deft portraitist. -- John L. Thomas, author of
Alternative AmericaWith
Progressive Intellectuals and the Dilemmas of Democratic Commitment Leon Fink joins the discussion of public intellectuals that has attracted much attention of late. Wisely adopting a biographical approach, he offers stellar portraits of half a dozen men and women who fit perfectly the definition of public intellectuals who sought, in some fashion, to educate the laboring masses… He tells a cautionary tale of the difficulties inherent in having the well-educated learn from the unlettered and the alienated connect with the masses… All who read this lucid, unsparingly honest work will derive a deeper appreciation of the difficulties involved. -- Alan Dawley, author of
Struggles for JusticeTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction Progressive Reformers, Social Scientists, and the Search for a Democratic Public Defining the People: The Wisconsin School of Labor History and the Creation of the American Worker The People's Expert: Charles McCarthy and the Perils of Public Service Joining the People: William English Walling and the Specter of the Intellectual Class A Love for the People: Anna Strunsky Walling and the Domestic Limits of Democratic Idealism A Voice for the People: A. Philip Randolph and the Cult of Leadership The People's Strategist: W. Jett Lauck and the Panacea of Plenty Teaching the People: Wil Lou Gray and the Siren of Educational Opportunity Epilogue: The Once and Future Career of the Public Intellectual Notes Index
