Writers on the Left: Episodes in American Literary Communism

"Writers on the Left" provides a chronicle of the involvement of American writers with the critical style and politics of communism. Emphasizing the golden age of American communism, Aaron traces the movement's bohemian origins to its demise in the early 1940s. Aaron creates a perceptive portrait of writers like Max Eastman, Floyd Dell, John Reed, Mike Gold and Joseph Freeman. Aaron also discusses the attractions of communism for more ambivalent but influential "fellow travellers" such as Edmund Wilson, Malcolm Cowley, Theodore Dreiser, Richard Wright and Langston Hughes.