American Radical

The Life and Times of I.F. Stone

"This is the right book at the right time from the right author. The right book, because IF Stone remains one of the great American voices, whose words still catch fire all these years later. The right time, because in the age of Obama liberals the world over are once again looking to the United States as a source of progressive inspiration. And the right author, because D.D. Guttenplan has that rare ability to combine scholarly rigor with an eye for a cracking human story—and the talent to tell it.”
—Jonathan Freedland, columnist, The Guardian (U.K.)

"Guttenplan draws on scores of interviews as well as broad and deep research to place Stone within the crowded canvas of American political history from the Great Depression to the Age of Reagan. The result is a narrative that captures Stone’s full significance as an investigative reporter, radical democrat and self-made Jewish intellectual. It makes a strong case for Stone’s continuing relevance to our own time.”
—Jackson Lears, The New York Times

"Prodigious research and a grateful heart inform this essential biography of an irreplaceable journalist."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“I. F. Stone is an inspiration to anyone who worries about the collapse of big newspapers with big budgets.”
—Norman Pearlstine, Executive Editor, Los Angeles Times

Can one reporter change the world? I. F. Stone thought so. A Popular Front columnist and New Deal propagandist, a fearless opponent of McCarthyism and feared scourge of official liars, a political activist whose accomplishments proved the enduring power of American radicalism, the legendary I. F. Stone - magnetic, witty, indefatigable - left a permanent mark on our politics and culture.

Born Isadore Feinstein, a peddler's son, in the slums of Philadelphia, by the age of twenty-five this college drop out had transformed himself into an influential New York City newsman, enjoying easy access to key figures in New Deal Washington and the salons of Manhattan. In a brilliant synthesis of biography and history, D. D. Guttenplan shows how Stone did it: this masterful account weaves together previously unknown material from archives, interviews, Stone's own words, and thousands of pages of government documents released to Guttenplan under the Freedom of Information Act.

With Stone, we feel the bite of the Depression, the hope inspired by FDR, desperation over the rise of Hitler and fascism, and jubilation when a surviving remnant of European Jewry reached Palestine. From the great sit-down strikes marking the rise of the CIO to the sit-ins for racial equality, from the earliest marches in favor of nuclear disarmament to the gigantic demonstrations against the war in Vietnam - wherever there was an American opposition, Stone was in the thick of it. Reminding us that the man behind I. F Stone's Weekly was a consummate capital insider who regularly scooped other reporter s with impeccably sourced revelations, Guttenplan offers a compelling portrait of America's most revered and reviled radical journalist.

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