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Left Out: A Political Journey
For the past thirty-five years, activist and historian Martin Duberman has been witness to our country's tumultuous confrontations with a formidable array of shifting issues - equality for people of color, the feminist movement, the anti-war movement, the gay/lesbian and AIDS political formations. This selection of his previously published and revised work charts Duberman's own lifeline as well as those of the varied movements that tried to change the country's priorities and equalize its privileges. All of these essays, articles, and reviews, first published in such periodicals as The Nation, the New York Times , and The Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review , have been amended for this publication and divided into pertinent categories. Duberman has written a special introduction, as well as introductory essays to each section of the book.
496 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1999
About the author
Martin Duberman
66 books88 followersMartin Bauml Duberman is a scholar and playwright. He graduated from Yale in 1952 and earned a Ph.D. in American history from Harvard in 1957. Duberman left his tenured position at Princeton University in 1971 to become Distinguished Professor of History at Lehman College in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 27, 2024
I knew essentially nothing about Martin Duberman before starting this book, which I had bought 20 years ago on a whim at a book sale. This collection of essays spans several decades and a number of different topics. The essays on their own are largely engaging but the text as a whole feels like a grab bag of topics without a lot necessarily holding them together.
Duberman is a history professor, and did much pioneering work in LGBT studies back when this was far outside of mainstream studies. The essays in this book touch a number of left topics, however, not only LGBT issues. There are essays dealing largely with racial issues, foreign policy, and inter-left schisms within these areas.
I was really caught up in the first essay in the book, which is an examination of the abolitionist movement. Duberman compares public attitudes around those calling for the immediate the abolition of slavery and other anti-slavery groups that held a more "moderate" position of allowing slavery to theoretically die out slowly over time by choking off access to new slave states/technological innovation increasingly making slavery less necessary for the Southern economy. He makes some very cogent points about how seductive it is to adopt a worldview that recognizes a wrong in the world but insists that long term trends will solve the issue without any action or sacrifice in the near term.
That essay was the high point for me, though the rest of the book is always readable if not always necessarily compelling. The essays regarding the creation of early LGBT advocacy organizations in New York have a personal bent, as Duberman was personally involved; this section was a little too in the weeds for me and gets somewhat bogged down in questions about left purity that reminded me strongly about some of the meetings I have sat through in my younger days.
Duberman is always very conscious of himself as a white man and tries to be careful with his language and recognition of the privilege he has.
In the end, this was a book I liked but at the same time a hard book to recommend since it is so diffuse in its subject matter; if you are like me in that you enjoy cultivating a diverse taste in your reading material, you may find yourself enjoying this text as I did. But that's going to be a minority of readers.
Duberman is probably most interesting for those with a strong interest in gender and sexual studies, since that is where his focus seems to have evolved toward over the years. If you want a sampler of this thought, I guess this is a fine book for that. But for those wanting a deeper dive, he has a large collection of other books published over his career that are likely more rewarding reads.
Duberman is a history professor, and did much pioneering work in LGBT studies back when this was far outside of mainstream studies. The essays in this book touch a number of left topics, however, not only LGBT issues. There are essays dealing largely with racial issues, foreign policy, and inter-left schisms within these areas.
I was really caught up in the first essay in the book, which is an examination of the abolitionist movement. Duberman compares public attitudes around those calling for the immediate the abolition of slavery and other anti-slavery groups that held a more "moderate" position of allowing slavery to theoretically die out slowly over time by choking off access to new slave states/technological innovation increasingly making slavery less necessary for the Southern economy. He makes some very cogent points about how seductive it is to adopt a worldview that recognizes a wrong in the world but insists that long term trends will solve the issue without any action or sacrifice in the near term.
That essay was the high point for me, though the rest of the book is always readable if not always necessarily compelling. The essays regarding the creation of early LGBT advocacy organizations in New York have a personal bent, as Duberman was personally involved; this section was a little too in the weeds for me and gets somewhat bogged down in questions about left purity that reminded me strongly about some of the meetings I have sat through in my younger days.
Duberman is always very conscious of himself as a white man and tries to be careful with his language and recognition of the privilege he has.
In the end, this was a book I liked but at the same time a hard book to recommend since it is so diffuse in its subject matter; if you are like me in that you enjoy cultivating a diverse taste in your reading material, you may find yourself enjoying this text as I did. But that's going to be a minority of readers.
Duberman is probably most interesting for those with a strong interest in gender and sexual studies, since that is where his focus seems to have evolved toward over the years. If you want a sampler of this thought, I guess this is a fine book for that. But for those wanting a deeper dive, he has a large collection of other books published over his career that are likely more rewarding reads.
March 15, 2011
Duberman is a good storyteller. Although the organization of the book was a bit too hodge-podge for me.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews