The Left at War

[E]ngaging and provocative. [Aims] to stimulate the Left through an injection of new ideas. To the extent that these ideas challenge what some see as core Leftist convictions, some on the Left - those who are content to stay the course and await the coming revolution - will not welcome them. But those who see the Left at a critical crossroads, who believe that its recent political failures have amplified the need for the Left to reinvent and revitalize itself, will certainly find these ideas worth consideration... [Berube has] done valuable work in clearing the way for a more intellectually innovative and politically effective Left. * Marx & Philosophy *
Youll rejoice that theres such an intelligent and even-minded critic of the left who takes his principles seriously enough to challenge those who threaten to destroy them from within. * Bookforum *
Bérubé links progressives inability to control the conversation on national security during the Bush administration to cultural studies failure to deliver on its promise of a vibrant New Left. And in the process, he also tries to imagine a newer and better onea left that both knows what is worth fighting for and how to fight for it. * American Prospect *
If Berube succeeds in making leftists, from center-left politicians like Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank all the way out to the most radical anarchists, ponder the question of violence seriously, he will have done an inestimable service. That he attempts to do just that makes the most important book I have read in the past five years. -- John McGowan in Symploke
A rigorous, hard-hitting, and impressively detailed critique and account of the United States left during wartimeand at war with itself. It is far and away the most thoroughly reasoned and researched brief for a middle way between a predictably anti-imperialist left and a revoltingly hawkish liberalism, and in this it is immensely useful both as a guide to recent debates and as a sort of internationalist handbook. Rousing, engrossing, principled, and brave. -- Eric Lott,author of The Disappearing Liberal Intellectual
An incisive critique of the excesses of the political and academic left. Bérubé is uniquely positioned to diagnose the relationship between policy debates over the Iraq War and the fate of cultural studies in United States. The result is a fog-clearing argument for a new left internationalism centered on human rights and supranational institutions, and a timely reconsideration of Stuart Halls rich analysis of the rise of Thatcherism in England. This is an important and bracing book. -- Amanda Anderson,author of The Way We Argue Now: A Study in the Cultures of Theory
Bérubé is the kind of critic, and the kind of advocate, that the Left desperately needs. I sometimes disagree with him, and then I argue with him in my head. I strongly recommend this practice: read him, learn from him, argue with him. It is a wonderfully bracing experience. -- Michael Walzer,editor, Dissent Magazine
Bérubés new book delivers an incredibly timely message of tough love to the American Left. On issue after issuefrom Afghanistan to Iraq to the domestic fronthe separates progressive myth from progressive reality. In the process he distinguishes good reasoning from bad among the major political writers of the last generation and gives us a fresh agenda for future work. -- Cary Nelson,University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Indefatigably clear-minded and relentlessly researched, Bérubés The Left at War offers an invaluable excavation of just what has gone wrong, and occasionally right, with the academic/intellectual left in America. Anyone concerned with its future will be relying on this work for many years to come. -- Eric Alterman,author of Why Were Liberals
The most important book I have read in the past fiver years. -- John McGowan