Daniel Bell at 100

For over a decade, books about the “New York Intellectuals” had been appearing at a steady clip, and they usually devoted considerable attention to him: his early years in the socialist movement and at the City College of New York; his career as a prolific intellectual journalist; his development into one of the great modern sociologists. Dorman also beautifully traced their subsequent careers, the way they dealt with McCarthyism and the New Left, and their political parting of ways: Howe the democratic socialist (and Dissent founder) on one side, Kristol the unabashed neoconservative and Reaganite on the other; Glazer and my father somewhere in between, with my father eventually tending more toward the left. The sport of the New York Jewish intellectuals was competitive talking, and they all needed their stories, their performances, to be contenders.

Source: www.dissentmagazine.org