American Radical: The Life and Times of I. F. Stone

By D. D. Guttenplan. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 570 pp, $44, hardcover

Nowadays, journalism students are advised to suppress their feelings and not get too emotionally involved in the stories they're covering. Thankfully, no journalism school was able to contaminate America's greatest crusading journalist, I. F. Stone, before he took up the craft in the 1920s.

Born to Russian Jewish immigrants in Philadelphia, Stone threw himself into the biggest stories of the 20th century. He took sides, skewered opponents, and tried his damnedest to change the world for the better. This was as true in his early days as an editorial writer for the New York Post as it was in his later life as publisher of his widely distributed newsletter, I. F. Stone's Weekly.

In this brilliant and meticulously researched book, London-based author D. D. Guttenplan tells the history not only of Stone's life but of the issues he championed. In so doing, Guttenplan offers a nuanced history of the American left as well as an alternative view of such major U.S. figures as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, and John F. Kennedy.

FDR comes across as a clever chameleon who needed constant prodding from the left; Hoover, whose men tracked Stone for years, is the face of American fascism; and JFK is presented as a U.S. imperialist, as well as a waffler on desegregation.

What's striking is how often Stone—a keenly intelligent, bespectacled muckraker—was ahead of his journalistic peers. As early as 1963, Stone asserted that the war in Vietnam was being lost. Before the emergence of Martin Luther King, he declared that African-Americans needed a Gandhi-like figure to advance civil rights. A staunch supporter of Israel, Stone also repeatedly warned Jews that they must accommodate the legitimate aspirations of displaced Palestinians or face an uncertain future.

Guttenplan, a correspondent for the Nation, has not written a hagiography of Stone, though it's clear where his sympathies lie. The author puts to rest an oft-mentioned right-wing canard that the fiery journalist was on the payroll of the KGB, at the same time ensuring that Stone is given his due for courageously standing up to tyrants and changing Americans' view of the Vietnam War.