Description

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A compelling biography of an important eyewitness to the twentieth century.

Marie Syrkin’s life spanned ninety years of the twentieth century, 1899–1989. As a polemical journalist, socialist Zionist, poet, educator, literary critic, translator, and idiosyncratic feminist, she was an eyewitness to and reporter on most of the major events in America, Israel, and Europe. Beautiful as well as brilliant, she had a rich personal life as a lover, wife, mother, and friend. During her lifetime Syrkin’s name was widely recognized in the world of Jewish life and letters. Yet, since Syrkin’s death, recognition of her name is no longer quite so immediate. Carole S. Kessner’s biography restores Syrkin’s fascinating life and legacy for a new generation.
 

About the Author

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Carole S. Kessner is professor emerita, Department of Comparative Studies, SUNY Stony Brook. She is the recipient of the Marie Syrkin Fellowship for 1994, and the winner of the 2009  National Jewish Book Award for Biography. The author of many essays and articles ranging from "Milton's Hebraic Herculean Hero" to "The Emma Lazarus-Henry James Connection: Eight Letters," she is the editor and contributor to The "Other" New York Jewish Intellectuals (1994) and is the co-editor of  and contributor to Studies in American Jewish Literature: vol.29, 2010. She lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. 

Praise For…

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“Finally, Zionist thinker Marie Syrkin gets the recognition she deserves. . . . It is not sentimental overpraise to say that Marie Syrkin deserves a place at the roundtable of great intellects who helped shape contemporary Jewish-American liberalism.”
— Haaretz