{"title":"Norman Podhoretz","description":"\u003cp\u003eNorman Podhoretz (1930-2025) was an author, editor, and political and cultural critic. He was the editor of \u003cem\u003eCommentary\u003c\/em\u003e from 1960 to 1995 and wrote twelve nonfiction books, including his autobiography \u003cem\u003eMaking It\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eWorld War IV\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eThe Prophets\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eEx-Friends\u003c\/em\u003e, and \u003cem\u003eWhy Are Jews Liberals?\u003c\/em\u003e He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"making-it","title":"Making It","description":"Norman Podhoretz, the son of Jewish immigrants, grew up in the tough Brownsville section of Brooklyn, attended Columbia University on a scholarship, and later received degrees from the Jewish Theological Seminary and Cambridge University. \u003cem\u003eMaking It\u003c\/em\u003e is his blistering account of fighting his way out of Brooklyn and into, then out of, the Ivory Tower, of his military service, and finally of his induction into the ranks of what he calls “the Family,” the small group of left-wing and largely Jewish critics and writers whose opinions came to dominate and increasingly politicize the American literary scene in the fifties and sixties. It is a Balzacian story of raw talent and relentless and ruthless ambition. It is also a closely observed and in many ways still-pertinent analysis of the tense and more than a little duplicitous relationship that exists in America between intellect and imagination, money, social status, and power.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Family responded to the book with outrage, and Podhoretz soon turned no less angrily on them, becoming the fierce neoconservative he remains to this day. Fifty years after its first publication, this controversial and legendary book remains a riveting autobiography, a book that can be painfully revealing about the complex convictions and needs of a complicated man as well as a fascinating and essential document of mid-century American cultural life.","brand":"New York Review Books","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":30508090887,"sku":"9781681370804","price":18.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0726\/9203\/products\/podhoretz.hires.NEW.jpg?v=1481840324"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.nyrb.com\/collections\/norman-podhoretz\/biography-memoir.oembed","provider":"New York Review Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}