Noble Abstractions: American Liberal Intellectuals and World War II.(Review) (book review)

Historian, The, September, 2000 by Steigerwald, David

Noble Abstractions: American Liberal Intellectuals and World War II. By Frank A. Warren. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999. Pp. x, 256. $40.00.)

In this solid and reasonable book, the author covers the activities of left-wing liberals who understood World War II as an opportunity for social and political revolution. Generally associated with the standard progressive journals and gathered into the Union for Democratic Action and the progressive predecessor to the better-known Americans for Democratic Action, Frank A. Warren's liberals are familiar: Freda Kirchwey, Reinhold Niebuhr, Bruce Bliven, Alfred Bingham, and James Loeb, among others. But one of the virtues of Noble Abstractions is the attention accorded to lesser figures, such as the renegade...

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