That Party of Lenny's

"The problem that Seldes faces in writing about Bernstein, then, is not to prove that politics mattered to him. Clearly, as Seldes writes in his introduction, 'to ignore the impact of political forces upon Bernstein is to miss out on much of what enlivened and motivated him.' What Seldes must prove, rather, is that Bernstein’s politics should matter to us. For if Bernstein was known as a famous liberal, he is also widely remembered as a fatuous one."

Adam Kirsch in Tablet Magazine reviews Barry Seldes's Leonard Bernstein: The Political Life of an American Musician.