My Love Affair with America: The Cautionary Tale of a Cheerful Conservative

by Norman Podhoretz

Book Overview

My Love Affair with America is more than the poignant recovery of lost time. Podhoretz uses his own experience to launch a strong defense of America and American values at a time when he fears that... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743200519
• ISBN13: 9780743200516
• Release Date: July 2000
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

more wisdom from NAMBLA

Norman Podhoretz, the wise, puckish sage of NAMBLA, has come out with a new collection of homespun wisdom. I don't necessarily agree with his suggestion that America put its defense department "in a blind trust" under the direction of Israel, although it is refreshing to hear a prominent Neo-Con admit his secret intentions. Nor will most readers find the same pleasure in watching animals eat their young that seems to arouse Podhoretz so profoundly. But the wonderful memoir -- "From Brownsville to Brownsville" -- a tale of Podhoretz's long ride, most of it on a pogo stick, from Brooklyn to Texas -- ought to move anybody who has yearned to "make it" himself.

A tribute to American freedom and opportunity

As one who was only vaguely familiar with Podhoretz, I found this to be a touching, though unemotional account of the progression of his thought from Left to Right. The book lost me in some of the narcissistic intellectual infighting which has been, I guess, an important part of his life. But color was provided with his anecdotal accounts of the Eastern European Jewish experience in America. His "caution" is to his new friends on the Right who fear that America has gone over the edge culturally. He encourages them to look at the bigger picture, and appreciate the freedom and opportunity we enjoy. I was curious as to why so many Jewish intellectuals have made the shift toward conservatism, yet the mainstream remains stuck in FDR liberalism. This book helps to explain that fact, although I think Horowitz did a better job in "Radical Son".

Good Ol' Norman, The Optimist

Despite his curmudgeonly reputation, this is a happy book by Podhoretz. Other conservatives, like Roger Kimball in his new book "The Long March", see the national culture as dominated by the bad ideas of the '60's and '70's. Podhoretz claims that our democracy still works and that the liberal elites are being forced by popular opinion to be more tolerant of the bourgeois middle-class values they abhor. Crime and social pathology are down, prosperity is way up, and religion "in the public square" is no longer such a forbidden concept. He backs his optimistic conclusions by relating his own life story, one of success and upward mobility even when he was a leftist radical and his "love affair with America" was disrupted by his utopianism. A chastened Podhoretz learned to appreciate his country all over again and warns right-wingers not to repeat his mistake. Some conservatives, because of the perceived public indifferance to the Clinton scandals, have proclaimed their despair over crumbling American values. Norman's advice, based on his long life is: have faith and patience. American capitalism and democracy, the most successful and resilient political system in the world (because it is based on freedom), will sort things out.

Hurray for America, the haven for immigrants & last gr8 hope

The book opens with a rendition of American the Beautiful. Norman Podhoretz, Commentary Mag bigwig and Dean of America's neo Conservatives recollects his life and fight against Marxists and the ACLU. Born in Brownsville, the son of Jewish immigrants (Julius/Joel and Helen/Henya), Norman (Naphtali) attended public schools and sang Catholic hymns taught by Irish spinsters. He fills this ode to America with fabulous stories and anecdotes, as he recounts his youth and Liberalism and maturation as a Conservative. Along the way he continues his ode to those peddlers who helped create the America we know today. The book is a ringing Bell that counters what William F Buckley refers to as the keening sound of complaints against the USA. Podhoretz spins good yarns. I enjoyed his story about his graduation from Columbia, and receipt of a Fellowship to "Oxbridge." The other recipient turned out to be the son of the woman from Norman's mother's village. She and his his mother had shared the trip from Europe to Ellis Island and had lost touch over the decades. Another great story was a recollection of Daniel Bell poking fun at his future brother-in-law Alfred Kazin. Kazin, writing "On Native Ground", spoke of OUR forests. Bell found it weird to refer to OUR forests, as if urban working class Jews from NYC were Americans. Or when famed Professor of Philosophy Sidney Morgenbesser, a lapsed rabbi, found it bizarre that he was teaching undergrads about Saint Augustine. I was shocked by these quaint attitudes til I was even more shocked that thirty years later, Podhoretz recounts, Gore Vidal still writes about Jews as being not "us" or being dual loyalists. Part 4 of the book, titled "Dayyenu American-style," recounts Podhoretz's points of gratitude and his love of country. I suggest that the diligent reader pair this book with Dershowitz's "Chutzpah."

Podhoretz: going squishy on us?

When reading anything by Norman Podhoretz, I usually have to unclench my teeth at least once an hour. To my surprise, I made it through the entire book in a single day, and my blood pressure never rose into the red zone.This book is far more autobiographical than anything Podhoretz has written (that I've read to date), and anyone seeking to demonize him as a humorless reactionary will have trouble doing so after reading his portraits of his grandparents and parents.Of course, Podhoretz hasn't changed THAT much, and along the way he makes excursions into both non-contentious history (the uneasy role of the American intellectual) and highly partisan recountings of his own battles (especially around the 1960s). This is the cultural critic we know and love/hate, and Podhoretz is at the top of the form (except for a few vicious ad hominem attacks reminiscent of those in "Ex-Friends").Podhoretz also devotes a great deal of space to the nature of Jewish identity in this book, using his family history as a springboard. This is a little more sentimental than most of his writing, but still of high quality.This is not vintage Podhoretz, due to the autobiographical framework, which forces the author to fit his observations into a tighter structure than he is used to. He also seems to have mellowed a bit with age. However, his powers are as sharp as ever, and it is refreshing to see him deploy them in a new context.