A Voice Still Heard: Selected Essays of Irving Howe - Hardcover

Social and literary critic Irving Howe (1920–1993) was a MacArthur Fellow, and a National Book Award winner, and was considered to be one of the great Jewish intellectuals of his time. Nina Howe is Concordia University Research Chair in Education and a member of the university’s Faculty of Arts and Science. She lives in Montreal.

"Irving Howe was a critic of literature, politics, and society, unmatched in his time for diversity of strength. A generous power of admiration runs through all his writing like a hidden melody." —DAVID BROMWICH (David Bromwich)

"Irving Howe exemplified the intellectual vocation consummately. He was the only American intellectual of his era who wrote about literature and politics, sensibility and justice, with equal authority. In a lifetime at the typewriter he never wrote a phony word. And he knew how to champion causes and complexities at the same time -- an exceedingly rare accomplishment. A Voice Still Heard is a necessary book: here is how it should be done. These masterful essays are the work of an exacting mind and a noble heart." —LEON WIESELTIER (Leon Wieseltier)

"It is the rare writer who can bring together critical consciousness with political conscience.  Howe's essays show us what original, penetrating thinking might still look like today." —ROCHELLE GURSTEIN (Rochelle Gurstein)

"It is a great pleasure to immerse oneself in the work of one of the greatest American essayists of the 20th century. As historian, man of letters, and radical critic of political folly, Irving Howe makes as much sense in our time as he did in his."—MICHAEL KAZIN (Michael Kazin)

“In an era of tweets, hype and jargonized monographs A Voice Still Heard  offers the opposite,  some of Irving Howe’s bracing, straightforward and classic essays that are essential reading for the literati.  Return to Howe and find a literary critic who was unafraid of politics and sweeping generalizations. Long Live Irving Howe!” —RUSSELL JACOBY
(Russell Jacoby)

"Irving Howe argued the world across decades. In this marvelously insightful set of essays, astutely selected to give a generous taste of his ranging and restive intelligence from the 1950s to the 1990s, Howe’s abiding concerns in politics, literature, and Jewish history are a model to the reader today of incisive critical engagement. In A Voice Still Heard, Howe’s is a voice that is impossible to forget, and one that replays the careful listener in volumes." — ERIC BANKS
(Eric Banks)

"This splendid selection of Irving Howe’s essays and reviews reminds us of the intelligence and insight of all his work. But there is something else on display here, which was of great importance to him and to the many friends who loved and admired him: his partisanship. Irving was a member of the party of justice and equality, and everything he wrote expresses that commitment."—MICHAEL WALZER (Michael Walzer)

"With the light of his unfailing moral and literary intelligence, Irving Howe fashioned a way through a blighted age, its delusional hopes and literary achievements, illuminating everything he saw.  These shining, frequently moving essays even instruct the reader who disagrees with this or that judgment."—TODD GITLIN (Todd Gitlin)

“This important collection allows a new generation of readers to hear Howe's uncompromising voice.”—Kirkus Reviews (Kirkus Reviews)

“If young leftists aren’t reading Howe, they ought to be.”—Adam Kirsch, Times Literary Supplement (Adam Kirsch Times Literary Supplement)