"Well-Written and Superb History"

"There is a role to play in the United States for a serious political left to challenge the assumptions of the center-left and center-right and raise issues the mainstream parties and movements would otherwise ignore. But, as Maurice Isserman's book reveals, the Communist Party USA could never have served that purpose—because a healthy left, unlike the CPUSA, would be a loyal opposition, acting in the best spirit of the American experiment rather than supporting its enemies."

Ronald Radosh at The Bulwark reviews Maurice Isserman's Reds: The Tragedy of American Communism.

Unlearned

"Although the book by Stone and Kuznick is heavily footnoted, the sourcing, as the example of Wallace’s 1952 article suggests, recalls nothing so much as Dick Cheney’s cherry-picking of intelligence, particularly about the origins and early years of the cold war. The authors also devote many thousands of words to criticism of such destructive American policies as Ronald Reagan’s in Central America and George W. Bush’s in Iraq, but much of this will be familiar to readers of these pages, as will their objections to Barack Obama’s use of predator drones. This book is less a work of history than a skewed political document, restating and updating a view of the world that the independent radical Dwight Macdonald once likened to a fog, 'caused by the warm winds of the liberal Gulf Stream coming in contact with the Soviet glacier'—but now more than twenty years after the dissolution of the Soviet empire."

Sean Wilentz in The New York Review of Books reviews Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick's The Untold History of the United States.

"It's October, So It Must Be Time For a Surprise"

"In the end, the Republican plan didn't work and the letters were never released. Why? Perhaps because Wendell Willkie decided it was beneath him. Perhaps because the Republicans were worried it would cause a backlash. Or perhaps it was because Willkie had a mistress and FDR made it clear that two could play the October Surprise game. Whatever the reason, the letters stayed in their vault and Roosevelt ended up winning the election by 5 million votes."

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones runs through past "October Surprises."

"The Radical Ideas of One Generation Are Often the Common Sense of the Next"

"Unfortunately, most Americans know little of this progressive history. It isn't taught in most high schools. You can't find it on the major television networks or even on the History Channel. Indeed, our history is under siege."

Peter Dreier in The Nation presents a list of "The Fifty Most Influential [Activist] Progressives of the Twentieth Century."