Lost Comrades

White Dan :

Dan S. White is Associate Professor of History, State University of New York at Albany.

Two of the most striking features of this book are its elegant composition and expression and its controversial subject. In the first instance White has, in masterly fashion, woven together a half-dozen intellectual-political biographies into a compelling story—one that reads like historical tragedy. It is no mean task to find the connections and continuities that bound together these Front Generation socialists. It is equally difficult to tie their stories together gracefully. The author skillfully criss-crosses the continent, moving his reader among contrasting geographic and historic contexts. In the second instance White has selected a subject that has been shrouded in accusations often unsubstantiated, controversy, and even some mystery. White has written with sympathy and insight about a generation of socialists of whom some are commonly assailed as renegades and collaborators if not fascists...He offers an explanation of the political-intellectual itineraries of these socialists and shows us why some ended in disgrace and others died as heroes...There is not, to my knowledge, any other book that covers this ground. Perhaps the daunting demands of this broad comparative subject have deterred other historians. Perhaps the aura of shame that surrounds some of these men has discouraged scholars. Whatever the reason, no one has tried to treat this group of socialists as a generation and to render comprehensible their often tragic fate. None of the literature on socialism or collaboration attempts what White has achieved.