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xiii Acknowledgments The impetus for this book emerged more than a quarter century ago, when I first met and interviewed Irving Howe. My first thanks thus go to him, an exemplary elder representing so much of the best from the ever receding world of my intellectual fathers. More immediately, I am grateful to Nina Howe, who not only wrote the Afterword but also gave me photos of her father and the Howe family for this volume. Later she also interceded with Robert Silvers to acquire his memorial tribute to Irving Howe for the collection. It was a great pleasure to spend a wintry evening in November 2009 in the warmth of her Montreal home, where she and her husband Bill Bukowski shared with me their personal memories of Irving Howe. I owe an equal debt of gratitude to Nina’s older brother, Nick Howe, who enthusiastically supported this collection as it was conceived and took early shape. I had come to know Nick when we worked together on my two previous books devoted to his father, Irving Howe and the Critics (2004) and The Worlds of Irving Howe (2005), to which Nick generously contributed personal essays and family photographs. Nick’s premature death at 53 from leukemia in September 2006 was a cruel tragedy, occurring just at the moment when he was entering a period not only of his full powers as a writer but also of professional recognition as a scholar-critic, having recently accepted a position at the University of California at Berkeley. The interviews with Irving Howe in this volume could not have been gathered without the generous cooperation of the interviewers. I am grateful to them for permission to include their interviews and to edit them selectively in order to make them more accessible. Several of the contributors—especially Todd Gitlin, Maurice Isserman, and Neil Jumonville—were not only supportive but also helpful with clarifying an obscure reference, deciphering a garbled phrase on audiocassette , or placing a remark of Howe in historical and political context. Other colleagues and friends read parts of the manuscript as it progressed and offered sage advice: Morris Dickstein, Steve Longstaff, Neil McLaughlin, and Jonathan Imber. Dan Klein entered late in the day and distinguished himself as copyeditor and proofreader extraordinaire, catching several howlers with vir- xiv tuoso last-minute saves. Above all, I wish to thank my co-editor, Ethan Goffman , who joined to work with me on this project as it struggled toward maturity, reinvigorating it in a collaboration that has been both wonderfully enjoyable and richly edifying. Finally, I thank my old colleague and friend Walter H. Sokel, a onetime student and colleague of Lionel Trilling at Columbia University, an acquaintance of Hannah Arendt, and a long-time admirer of Irving Howe and other New York intellectual elders. I became acquainted with Walter, first as a Ph.D. student and later as a junior colleague, during the last two decades of his academic career at the University of Virginia. Now in his mid-90s, his energy still undimmed, Walter is another emissary from Howe’s “world of our fathers”—indeed a brilliant exemplar of that dying species, a consummate intellectual, a man of erudition and Bildung. For me, he shines forever forth as mentor and Mensch. For all these reasons and more, I dedicate this book to Walter. -John Rodden Grateful thanks to Daniel Klein for his editing prowess, Susan Klingenstein for her helpful advice, Maxine Phillips for her support, and Carolyn Mitchell for her intellectual guidance. Thanks to Karen Eilenberg for her insightful conversations and to Lisa Goffman for her astounding good spirits. I especially wish to thank John Rodden, who conceived of this book and whose vast intellectual resources and hard work made it what it is. And I thank Callie and Thelma for being there. -Ethan Goffman ...

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