The first general-interest biography of the legendary editor of The Jewish Daily Forward, the iconic Yiddish-language newspaper of the laboring masses that inspired, educated, and entertained millions of readers, helped redefine journalism during its golden age, and transformed American culture.
SETH LIPSKY is the founding editor of the Forward and of The New York Sun. He is a former foreign editor of The Wall Street Journal and served as a member of its editorial board. He served as a combat reporter in Vietnam for Pacific Stars and Stripes and is the author, most recently, of The Citizen's Constitution- An Annotated Guide. He livesin New York City.
“There is cause for celebration that Seth Lipsky has produced the
rich biography Abraham Cahan deserves. It’s hard to imagine a
better match of author and subject matter.”
—Jewish Review of Books
“In The Rise of Abraham Cahan Lipsky has produced a vivid biography
of a great journalist and socialist reformer.”
—Sam Roberts, “Bookshelf,” The New York Times
“At a time when too many biographers chronicle their subjects’
lives in excessive detail . . . it’s a pleasure to read Seth
Lipsky’s brisk, cogent book. It provides a welcome opportunity for
a new generation to discover this titanic figure in
twentieth-century journalism. . . . Lipsky, himself a longtime
newspaperman, is at his best recreating the vibrant panache with
which Cahan and the Forward spoke to and for the immigrants
flooding into America during the decades around the turn of the
twentieth century.”
—The Daily Beast
“Lipsky carefully charts Cahan’s influence [in] establishing the
Forward as a vital source of breaking international news and
providing Jewish immigrants with ‘a sympathetic, seasoned voice, an
enlightened cousin who had been in America just that much longer
and could serve as a guide to the country’s strange ways.’”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Not only a biography but also a vivid snapshot of a particularly
robust period in the history of American journalism.”
—The New York Observer
“All readers interested in the fate of Eastern European Jewish life
in 20th-century America owe a significant debt to Lipsky for his
intelligent and nuanced portrait of Abraham Cahan. . . .
Powerful.”
—Moment
“Lipsky does justice to Cahan’s forcefully articulated, and
frequently shifting, views. . . . Engaging.”
—Forward
“A fluent intellectual and political biography.”
—Commentary
“An indispensible book: a wonderfully intelligent reckoning with a
wonderfully intelligent man. Lipsky, a great newspaperman
himself, brings Cahan vividly alive, not only as a witness to the
spectacularly rich, dramatic, and consequential history of the
first half of the twentieth century but also as a defining actor in
that history. Lipsky’s portrait of the mighty Yiddish
editor—at once admiring and critical—is lit by the fiery political
and cultural debates that blazed in the pages he published, as the
Jewish experience was reshaped by and did so much to reshape the
modern world.”
—Philip Gourevitch, author of We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow
We Will Be Killed with Our Families
“An extraordinary book about an extraordinary man. Cahan is a
pivotal figure in both Jewish history and the history of American
journalism, and Lipsky has done a superlative job of capturing his
magnetism, his complexity, and his contradictions. Reading this
book made me wish I could transport myself back in time, to the
pressrooms and tenements and thunderous political rallies of the
Lower East Side a hundred years ago. Lipsky has a
Doctorow-like ability to bring to life the tumult, joy, and tragedy
of life in the big city. He is also the best person alive to
write the definite biography of Cahan because he is widely
understood to be Cahan’s worthiest successor.”
—Jeffrey Goldberg, author of Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and
Terror
“Lipsky on Cahan—this is the book we have been waiting for!
It took the boldest newspaperman of our time to nail the story of
the boldest newspaperman of his time—the legendary Yiddish editor
and English writer who successfully brokered the shidduch between
Jews and America. Cahan’s readiness to dig out the truth
behind ideological and political facades may be Lipsky’s bracing
model for today’s media and for what we, their audience,
deserve.”
—Ruth Wisse, Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and
professor of comparative literature, Harvard University
“Don’t believe that there was a time not long ago when a socialist
daily newspaper in New York City—published in Yiddish!—commanded
the attention not only of millions of Jewish immigrants but also of
presidents and foreign leaders? Read this magical book. It will
transport you back to some of the most tumultuous decades the world
has ever known, as seen through the life of a fearless newspaperman
whose paper didn’t simply cover events; it changed the course of
them.”
—Jonathan Mahler, author Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is
Burning
“A riveting account of Cahan’s life and times. Cahan was as complex
as he was courageous—Jewish immigrant, social democrat, labor
organizer, anti-communist, our earliest neoconservative. Seth
Lipsky is another fearless and brilliant newsman, and no one could
have told Cahan’s story better. This is a book to savor and
remember.”
—Peter Kann, Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter and former publisher
of The Wall Street Journal
“Cahan was at the forefront of the postwar battle against communist
subversion of the labor movement and powerfully helped to save
Europe from the tyrannies of Stalinism, though he had arrived in
America as a revolutionary socialist on the run from the Tsarist
secret police. Lipsky has given his story pulsating life.”
—Sir Harold Evans, editor at large, Reuters, and author of The
American Century
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