The Other American: The Life Of Michael Harrington

by Maurice Isserman

Maurice Isserman's bracingly honest, surprisingly touching biography traces the life of one of the heroes of the American Left and one of that country's most influential social critics and poverty experts. Most Americans first heard of Michael Harrington with the publication of The Other America, his seminal book on American poverty. Isserman expertly tracks Harrington's beginnings in the Catholic Worker movement, his abandonment of his once deeply-held Catholicism, his life in 1950s Greenwich Village, and his evolution as a thinker. Along the way Isserman dispels numerous myths, including several Harrington himself encouraged. And Isserman explains why Harrington, who more than any other single individual seemed perfectly positioned to play the role of adult mentor to the New Left in the 1960s, instead fell into disfavour with young campus activists, and lost the opportunity of a lifetime to make his democratic Socialist perspective a relevant force in American politics.

Genres: Biography, History, Politics, Nonfiction, The United States Of America

464 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Maurice Isserman received a B.A. in history from Reed College in 1973 and his Ph.D. in American history from the University of Rochester in 1979. He is Publius Virgilius Rogers Professor of American History at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York.

Reviews

[Larry Bassett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don’t confuse this with the book The Other America: Poverty in the United States, the excellent book about poverty in America by Harrington that was published in 1962 and is still relevant. The Other American: The Life of Michael Harrington is Harrington’s biography with a maybe clever but certainly confusing title.

If you don’t know, Michael was a lapsed Catholic, a committed socialist and a prime mover in the Democratic Socialists of America. He was a liberal in that he wanted to change the system from within and worked hard to do that through the left wing of the Democratic Party but he was also a radical in that he wanted ultimately to change the system. His commitment to socialism was well known and unquestioned. He was rarely involved in direct actions or nonviolent civil disobedience. What he did best was write, tour, speak, debate and recruit. His focus was on democratic socialism.

If you want to know something about the socialist movement in the U.S. since the 1950s, you will find this book interesting. If you are not interested in socialism at all, you are probably reading about the wrong guy because that is one of the things that Michael Harrington was all about! You can skip a couple of chapters of this book if you are not much interested in the internal workings of the various socialist parties in the U.S. Michael’s life is interesting even without that but easily half the book is about socialist organizing and infighting, successes and failures.

I have not read many biographies so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that this book starts when Michael is born in 1928 until he died in 1989. It is doggedly linear: it pretty much goes through his life year by year. His life as a Catholic student for his educational career through undergraduate school and his year at Yale in Law School to try to please his parents is only barely kept me interested. However, the time he was with the Catholic Worker in NYC interested me more because I have some experience with that organization and movement. Michael was a writer pretty much from the get go. He wanted to be a poet and spent a lot of years in Greenwich Village hanging out with the literary set. He wrote a lot of book reviews for the Village Voice and then a lot of material for socialist magazines and papers. He was an intellectual.

The Other America changed his life when it was published in 1962. It was a best seller and he became a hot property in the best sense. He spent the rest of his life focused on social change and played a long and major role in the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee and its successor, the Democratic Socialists of America. He left his mark on left wing politics in America and to some extent in the world. He played a behind the scenes role in developing President Johnson’s War on Poverty, never getting any public credit. As a socialist, he was never accepted (nor did he seek to be accepted) as a part of the Washington, D.C. establishment.

The book is extraordinarily well researched with 65 pages of footnotes, many with additional detail. I wanted to like this book a little bit more than I actually did in its first half. There is too much socialist party internal workings and disputes for my needs. And I am very receptive to socialism, just never liked the infighting and turf wars that regularly dominated U.S. socialist politics. I never did manage to meet Michael Harrington although I was probably in the same room with him at least once as he was involved with some of the same pacifist organizations that I was. That is a small universe so there are some familiar names scattered here and there in the book.

Michael was a fascinating and complex guy but he was a couple of notches above me intellectually so I have to mostly be satisfied with admiring him while not always following what he is saying. That applies to his two memoirs and this biography. Sad to say The Other American was written after Harrington died so did not benefit from his direct involvement. I have to limit myself to three stars but, if you like socialist party history, it probably moves up to four. You will get a detailed view of left wing politics in the U.S. from the 1950s through the 1980s.

(Addendum: I have a rule that a movie gets four stars if it makes me cry. Books rarely make my cry but The Other American ended with tears running down my cheeks so I better give it four stars. I am very glad I was persistent and read it to the end.)

For my review of The Other America: Poverty in the United States, go to http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... . That is really the book to read before you tackle this biography. It is very accessible and is must reading for anyone interested in poverty or social change work. A good socialist, Harrington was always in the corner of the underdog.

[hoffnarr · Rating 4 out of 5]

I looked for a biography of Harrington after joining the Democratic Socialists of America. The DSA is an unusual party on the socialist left since it balances its proud socialist tendencies with its anti-Communism, its political realism (it doesn't put forward its own candidates but works within the progressive wing of the Democratic party) and its strong partnership with the far stronger European socialist parties (the DSA is the US sister party in the Socialist International).

This book is very helpful in understanding how a party like the DSA came about. It traces the life of Harrington through the complicated history of socialist and Catholic progressive movements he was involved in through the mid-century and the conflicts of the 60s-80s between anti-Stalinist socialist parties and their new challengers among a New Left enamored with national liberation movements, whatever their totalitarian tendencies might be.

Isserman has a strong leftist background but doesn't pull any punches. His bio of Harrington contains plenty of material on Harrington's failures, the pathetic sectarian conflicts that destroyed so many of the movements he was a part of, and the failures of both the radicals and conservatives within the socialist and Democratic left of the United States.

The book is well written and researched but ends rather suddenly with Harrington's death, not taking the opportunity to reflect on his legacy or the developments of the DSA he founded in the years afterwards.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I probably heard Michael Harrington at a number of large rallies, I only 'met' him once. That was during the eighties, in a church where he was featured alongside Danny Davis. Beyond that, however, I'd been hearing about MH since high school, from friends in Tri-S, the school's social science society; from people in the Y.P.S.L. and the S.D.S.; and from the numerous political publications I either subscribed to or read at the Park Ridge Public Library. Then, during the freshman year at Grinnell College, his 'Poverty in America' was assigned for a class about social welfare policy. Finally, in the late seventies, after seminary, when I'd joined the Socialist Party, I heard quite a bit about him, mostly very critical, from other members.

This biography of Michael Harrington is good as regards his personal life and affiliations, particularly his early years. It weakens, however, in its treatment of the history of the Socialist Party, that organization with which he was especially identified. The Shachtmanite phenomenon is well covered as is the D.S.O.C., but the SPUSA that arose out of the Debs Caucus is mentioned not at all--though many of its members--and several of the author's informants--are. Knowing some of these persons and having been sedulously involved in the SPUSA and its state and local affiliates from 1979 until 1992, I was a bit hurt by the oversight.

[P.J. Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the story of Michael Harrington's struggle for relevance. He left the Catholic Worker in search of power to effect social change. A democratic socialist committed to improving the lot of the poor, he had to walk a tightrope between pragmatism and principle. Without selling out his socialist principles, he had to make forays into the Democratic Party, with mixed results. Democratic socialism, he said, was "the left wing of the possible." It was humanist, anti-Stalinist, anti-war, and in the tradition of Eugene Victor Debs.

He never held a position of real power, so his books and articles are his chief legacies. They were influential in nudging Democrats to the left, thus effecting social programs like the War on Poverty that made a difference in the lives of many people. TIME magazine called his book "The Other America" one of the ten most important nonfiction books of the twentieth century.

This book is a thorough and well documented portrayal of his many ideological and personal changes--at one time he called himself a Republican!--and his faction fighting within the Left. It is occasionally critical of him, but fair and objective. There is a lot of history here, and a lot of politics. Some philosophy. Plus interesting insights into other prominent people, such as Tom Hayden, Norman Thomas, Dorothy Day, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Bayard Rustin, Max Shachtman, Irving Howe, William F. Buckley, and George Meany.

[Alison Whiteman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book several years ago. Michael Harrington's infamous book about poverty in America, "The Other American" was inspired by his true life experiences. Although Harrington could have lived a life of wealth and privilege, he chose to follow in the path of Dorothy Day.

America seems to constantly struggle with the notion of helping one another versus informing people they must fend for themselves. If you want to read an inspiring story of a person who believes we ought to be helping one another in a collective fashion, this is truly an amazing story.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall a good biography, the author may spend a bit to much time detailing some of the infighting in the American left, although it was an important part of Harrington's life. Insightful in many ways, Harrington's book, "The Other America", inspired Lyndon Johnson to start the war on poverty.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

great bio of a great man