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tome15's review
5.0
Stone, I. F. The Best of I. F. Stone. Edited by Karl Weber. Introduction by Peter Osnos. Public Affairs, 2006.
The recent death of Pete Hamill got me to thinking about some of my other twentieth-century journalism heroes. Izzy Stone is high on the list. From Pearl Harbor to Vietnam, from McCarthy to Nixon, he did the kind of open-source investigative journalism that few reporters these days have the time or energy to pursue. His small-circulation weekly newspaper was read by everyone on Capitol Hill because he attended the dull committee meetings, read the reports, and delved into the seldom-read pages of the Congressional Record. He was a leftist at a time when leftists were called before Congress for public pillorying. He was a Zionist who defended the right of Nazis to speak. He was a friend of Robert Kennedy who was not afraid to charge him with equivocation on Vietnam. Finally, when he closed I. F. Stone’s Weekly, he spent his retirement getting a doctorate in classical literature and writing scholarly books on Socrates and Athenian Democracy. This well-edited and introduced anthology of his journalism will give you some idea of the clarity of his mind. Recommended.
The recent death of Pete Hamill got me to thinking about some of my other twentieth-century journalism heroes. Izzy Stone is high on the list. From Pearl Harbor to Vietnam, from McCarthy to Nixon, he did the kind of open-source investigative journalism that few reporters these days have the time or energy to pursue. His small-circulation weekly newspaper was read by everyone on Capitol Hill because he attended the dull committee meetings, read the reports, and delved into the seldom-read pages of the Congressional Record. He was a leftist at a time when leftists were called before Congress for public pillorying. He was a Zionist who defended the right of Nazis to speak. He was a friend of Robert Kennedy who was not afraid to charge him with equivocation on Vietnam. Finally, when he closed I. F. Stone’s Weekly, he spent his retirement getting a doctorate in classical literature and writing scholarly books on Socrates and Athenian Democracy. This well-edited and introduced anthology of his journalism will give you some idea of the clarity of his mind. Recommended.
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