A MORAL TEMPER: The Letters of Dwight Macdonald

"Flattered you think my political philosophy worth a thesis—and hopeful you will be able to define it more clearly than I ever have!" wrote critic and philosopher Dwight Macdonald to a graduate student in the 1950s. He then delivered a cogent précis of his political philosophy—drawing on anarchists such as Kropotkin, rejecting both British and Russian collectivism and decrying war—that negates the last part of his statement and stunningly exhibits his intelligence, wit and moral giantism. Born in 1906, Macdonald attended Exeter and Yale, and became by turns a Marxist, a Trotskyist, a pacifist, an anarchist, a prominent anti-Stalinist and a leading opponent of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Along the way he edited the Partisan Review (1937–1943) and founded the influential magazine Politics in 1944, which introduced such writers as Simone Weil, Albert Camus and Mary McCarthy. The early letters to his parents and, from the 1930s through the '70s, the dozens written to many noted American editors, thinkers and writers (from Henry Luce and Stephen Spender to John Leonard and Harrison Salisbury) range from insightful and witty to cranky (he complains about advances and royalties and gripes about friends). Macdonald is an important American thinker whose work has been much overlooked and whose ever-evolving political philosophies have gone misunderstood. This wonderful collection should do much to remedy the situation and will be vital to students and scholars of American political thought and intellectual history. (Oct. 5)