Criticism

Capouya, Emile. "The Political Essays of Irving Howe." Commonweal LXXXV, No. 10 (9 December 1966): 295-97.

Reviews Steady Work and describes Howe's politics as a "minimum program adopted in despair of the possibilities for fundamental reform."

Carr, E. H. "A Friend of the Revolution." The New York Times Book Review (26 November 1978): 9, 94.

Compares Howe's Leon Trotsky and Baruch Knei-Paz's The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky, noting that both authors seem caught in a paradox concerning the inevitability of history and the perversion of the Russian Revolution.

Donoghue, Denis. "Irving Howe's Steady Work." The New York Times Book Review (11 March 1979): 9, 18-19.

Assesses the strengths and weaknesses of Celebrations and Attacks.

Geismar, Maxwell. "A Rapt & Tumid Power." The Saturday Review (12 July 1952): 10-11.

Reviews William Faulkner, praising Howe's analysis of social-economic patterns in Faulkner's works while criticizing Howe's discussion of cultural and psychological issues.

Klein, Marcus. "Heritage of the Ghetto." The Nation 222, No. 12 (27 March 1976): 373-75.

Favorably assesses World of Our Fathers.

Kramer, Hilton. "Professor Howe's Prescriptions." The New Criterion 2, No. 8 (April 1984): 1-5.

Comments on a speech Howe delivered before the New York Council for the Humanities, concerning the present state of American culture.

Lasch, Christopher. "What about the Intellectuals." The New York Times Book Review (16 October 1966): 58.

Reviews Steady Work and discusses such issues as the place of intellectuals in society and the status of radical socialist thought in America.

Moers, Ellen. "Hardy Perennial." The New York Review of Books IX, No. 8 (9 November 1967): 31-3.

Remarks favorably on Howe's Thomas Hardy.

Overmeyer, Janet. Review of Thomas Hardy, by Irving Howe. The Christian Science Monitor 59, No. 195 (15 July 1967): 9.

Praises Howe's study of Hardy as fair, intelligent, and concise.

Rubin, Steven J. "The Ghetto and Beyond: First-Generation American-Jewish Autobiography and Cultural History." In Multicultural Autobiography: American Lives, edited by James Robert Payne, pp. 178-206. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992.

Considers the work of several Jewish writers. In his comments on Howe, Rubin focuses on Howe's treatment of Jewish consciousness in A Margin of Hope.

Ryan, Alan. "The Revolution of Backwardness." The Times Literary Supplement, No. 3982 (4 August 1978): 878-79.

Favorably reviews Howe's Leon Trotsky and Baruch Knei-Paz's The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky.

Sale, Roger. Review of The Critical Point, by Irving Howe. The New York Times Book Review (6 January 1974): 7.

Presents a generally positive assessment of Howe's essays in this collection. Sale's most critical remarks are reserved for the volume's first and last essays, which he feels are too polemical.

Schoenwald, Richard L. Review of World of Our Fathers, by Irving Howe. Commonweal CIII, No. 18 (27 August 1976): 572-74.

Favorably assesses World of Our Fathers, recounting the volume's focus and praising Howe's facility with language.

Weaver, Robert L. "Turning New Leaves." The Canadian Forum XXXI, No. 368 (September 1951): 134-35.

Comments on Howe's interpretations of Sherwood Anderson's works in Sherwood Anderson.

Wieseltier, Leon. "Only in America." The New York Review of Books XXIII, No. 12 (15 July 1976): 22-8.

Favorably reviews World of Our Fathers, calling it a "masterly social and cultural history, a vivid, elegiac, and scrupulously documented portrait of a complicated culture."

Wolin, Sheldon S. "The Radical Tradition." The Atlantic Monthly 256, No. 5 (November 1985): 138-42.

Favorably reviews Socialism and America and discusses the evolution of Howe's thoughts on socialism.

Wrong, Dennis. "Thinning Ranks." The New Republic 193, No. 22 (25 November 1985): 30-4.

Remarks on the major themes covered in Socialism and America.

Xenos, Nicholas. "The Doldrums Duet." The Nation 241, No. 16 (16 November 1985): 498-502.

Reviews Howe's Socialism and America and Michael Harrington's Taking Sides. Xenos faults Howe for not clearly defining his concept of socialism.