Richard Lingeman is a senior editor of The Nation. His books include Small Town America: A Narrative History, 1620-Present; Don’t You Know There’s a War On? The American Home Front, 1941-1945; An American Journey: Theodore Dreiser (a two-volume biography, now available in one abridged paperback edition from John Wiley & Sons); Sinclair Lewis: Rebel From Main Street (Random House); Double Lives: American Writers’ Friendships (Random House), and, most recently, The Noir Forties: The American People from Victory to the Cold War (Nation Books).
John Hess, who, it should be said, is one of The Nation‘s oldest friends and severest critics, once complained to me about an “editor’s choice” blurb I’d written, which contained a brief
Lenny Bruce, the potty-mouthed wit who turned stand-up comedy into social commentary, was posthumously pardoned yesterday by Gov. George E.
Richard Lingeman
This is a book that should be on every activist’s bed table, like Gideon bibles in hotels.
The likeness of Nathaniel Hawthorne hanging in the AmLit museum resembles the shadowy, fading portrait of a distinguished ancestor.