Paul M. Buhle

C.L.R. James is one of the twentieth century’s most remarkable individuals. As the author of the influential book The Black Jacobins , he is widely recognized as the premier scholar of slave revolt; the publication of his acute and sensitive volume Beyond a Boundary established an equal reputation as a historian of sport; and his tireless political and intellectual interventions have become the hallmark of a highly creative Marxist thinker, a brilliant dialectician and the last surviving pioneer of Pan-African liberation.James’s work has never previously been studied in its entirety. Now Paul Buhle, a longtime editorial collaborator with James, has produced a rich and informed analysis of his accomplishments. Drawing upon extensive interviews with James, his critics and his erstwhile supporters, together with many previously unpublished documents, Buhle’s book offers an appreciative and enlightening portrait of the man and his times. The author also sheds new light on subjects ranging across Pan-Africanism, West Indian literature, British and American Marxism and the rise of third world nationalism.

A graphic biography of socialist labor legend Eugene V. DebsDynamic and beloved American radical, labor leader, and socialist Eugene Victor Debs led the Socialist Party to federal and state office across the United States by the 1920s. Imprisoned for speaking out against World War I, Debs ran for president from prison on the Socialist Party ticket, receiving over 1 million votes. Debs’s life is a story of labor battles in industrializing America, of a fighting socialist politics grown directly out of the Midwest heartland, and of a distinctly American vision of socialism.

The first scholarly comic art biography of the legendary John Chapman. Johnny Appleseed made himself famous by spreading the seeds of apple trees from Pennsylvania to Indiana. He was also an early follower of theologian Emanuel Swedenborg. Along with apple trees, he offered the seeds of nonviolence and vegetarianism, good relations with Indians, and peace among the settlers themselves. The story of John Chapman operates as a kind of counter-narrative to the glorification of violence, conquest, and the "winning of the West" in the story of the Westward movement, and clears up many of the half-myths of Johnny Appleseed's own life and work. His apples, for instance, were prized for many reasons, but mainly for the making of hard cider, portable alcohol. His method of operation was a form of land speculation, purchasing potentially fertile acres on contract (such as "bottom land"), planting saplings, reselling the land, and then moving onward. He had less interest in becoming prosperous than in spreading his own gospel, based on visions of peace and love.Noah Van Sciver is member of Mad Magazine's usual gang of idiots, and the author of The Hypo and Fante Bukowski.Paul Buhle, formerly a senior lecturer at Brown University, produces radical comics. He founded the SDS journal Radical America and the archive Oral History of the American Left and, with Mari Jo Buhle, is coeditor of the Encyclopedia of the American Left.

No topic in American historiography has been more hotly debated than the role played by Marxism in the social and political life of the United States. Until now, most accounts have been partisan—either attacking Marxism as an alien ideology, or defending it as the authentic expression of the political will of the American working class.Paul Buhle has produced the first overview of American Marxism to go beyond this opposition. His account ranges from the immigrant socialism of the nineteenth century to the formation of the CPUSA in the wake of the Bolshevik revolution, the rise of American communism in the 1920s and 1930s, the crisis and split in 1957, and the revival of Marxism outside the Communist Party in the 1960s and 1970s.Brimming over with historical detail and grounded in substantial original research, Marxism in the United States provides a balanced account of the strengths and weaknesses that have characterized the history of American Marxism. This revised edition assesses the new challenges facing the American left in the 1990s.

The first-ever graphic biography of Paul Robeson, Ballad of an American, charts Robeson’s career as a singer, actor, scholar, athlete, and activist who achieved global fame. Through his films, concerts, and records, he became a potent symbol representing the promise of a multicultural, multiracial American democracy at a time when, despite his stardom, he was denied personal access to his many audiences. Robeson was a major figure in the rise of anti-colonialism in Africa and elsewhere, and a tireless campaigner for internationalism, peace, and human rights. Later in life, he embraced the civil rights and antiwar movements with the hope that new generations would attain his ideals of a peaceful and abundant world. Ballad of an American features beautifully drawn chapters by artist Sharon Rudahl, a compelling narrative about his life, and an afterword on the lasting impact of Robeson’s work in both the arts and politics. This graphic biography will enable all kinds of readers—especially newer generations who may be unfamiliar with him—to understand his life’s story and everlasting global significance.Ballad of an American: A Graphic Biography of Paul Robeson is published in conjunction with Rutgers University’s centennial commemoration of Robeson’s 1919 graduation from the university.View the blad for Ballad of an American.

Radical Hollywood is the first comprehensive history of the Hollywood Left. From the dawn of sound movies to the early 1950s, Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner trace the political and personal lives of the screenwriters, actors, directors, and producers on the Left and the often decisive impact of their work upon American film's Golden Age. Full of rich anecdotes, biographical detail, and explorations of movies well known, unjustly forgotten, and delightfully bizarre, the book is "an intelligent, well argued and absorbing examination of how politics and art can make startling and often strange bedfellows" ( Publishers Weekly ). Featuring an insert of rare film stills, Radical Hollywood relates the story behind the story of films in such genres as crime, women's films, family cinema, war, animation, and, particularly, film noir.

A profusely illustrated, popularly-written volume with original comic art, FDR and the New Deal For Beginners will shed new light upon a story now regaining visibility thanks to the recent economic crisis and prominent reformer, President Obama, in the White House. The history of the precedent-making FDR administration through the bitter economic depression, with expansive programs empowering artists and working people, comes alive as the grandest social experiment in the history of American democracy. For the first time, the lives of the president, the first lady and the ordinary people of the time will be seen through an inventive comic narrative accompanying historic illustrations and a sympathetic but not uncritical text.

Using a unique blend of text, collage, and comic art, this social commentary written in graphic novel format analyzes the continuity between the myth of Robin Hood and the occurrence of social uprisings among peasants. In addition, the book explores the mysteries, factual evidence, and trajectory that led to centuries of village festivals, songs, films, and cult television shows about the mythical hero who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. Featuring a collage of various artistic renderings of Robin Hood over the past seven centuries, the comic portion presents a distinct perspective of the folk hero. Furthermore, the book reveals a largely unknown and unconsidered environmental side of Robin Hood, and touches on ecological wholeness that, for the most part, is absent in the mythos.

In this original, colorful history of "business unionism," Paul Buhle explains how trade union leaders in the United States became remote from the workers they claimed to represent as they allied with the very corporate executives and government officials who persistently opposed labor's interests.At the center of the tale are three of the most powerful labor leaders of the past Samuel Gompers, George Meany, and Lane Kirkland, successive presidents of the American Federation of Labor and its descendent, the AFL-CIO. Many other labor leaders, from John L. Lewis to Walter Reuther, receive in-depth treatment.Taking Care of Business demonstrates how a union hierarchy heavily populated by former radicals thwarted women and people of color from joining unions, suppressed shop floor militance, and colluded with business and government at home and abroad. Buhle shows how these leaders defeated generations of radical union members who sought a more democratic, class-based approach for the movement.

Buhle and Wagner have put together the definitive guide to the films, directors, stars, writers, designers, producers and anyone else who was blacklisted by Joseph McCarthy during the notorious Hollywood blacklist era. In over 2000 entries, film lovers get every piece of information they could ever want. Covering such films as "Roman Holiday "and "Bridge on the River Kwai" and linking them up with the men and women involved, "Blacklisted" becomes the ultimate film lover's guide to Hollywood's darkest days.

When he was summoned before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1951, Abraham Lincoln Polonsky (1911-1999) was labeled "a very dangerous citizen" by Harold Velde, a congressman from Illinois. Lawyer, educator, novelist, labor organizer, radio and television scriptwriter, film director and screenwriter, wartime intelligence operative, and full-time radical romantic, Polonsky was blacklisted in Hollywood for refusing to be an informer. The New York Times called his blacklisting the single greatest loss to American film during the McCarthy era, and his expressed admirers include Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Sidney Lumet, Warren Beatty, and Harry Belafonte. In this first critical and cultural biography of Abraham Polonsky, Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner present both an accomplished consideration of a remarkable survivor of America's cultural cold war and a superb study of the Hollywood left.The Bronx-born son of immigrant parents, Polonsky―in the few years after the end of World War II and just before the blacklist―had one of the most distinguished careers in Hollywood. He wrote two films that established John Garfield's postwar persona, Body and Soul (1947), still the standard for boxing films and the model for such movies as Raging Bull and Pulp Fiction ; and Force of Evil (1948), the great noir drama that he also directed. Once blacklisted, Polonsky quit working under his own name, yet he proved to be one of television's most talented writers. Later in life he became the most acerbic critic of the Hollywood blacklist's legacy while writing and directing films such as Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1970).A Very Dangerous Citizen goes beyond biography to help us understand the relationship between art and politics in American culture and to uncover the effects of U.S. anticommunism and anti-Semitism. Rich in anecdote and in analysis, it provides an informative and entertaining portrait of one of the most intriguing personalities of twentieth-century American culture.

Hidden in Plain Sight completes Buhle and Wagner's trilogy on the Hollywood blacklist. When the blacklistees were hounded out of Hollywood, some left for television where many worked on children's shows like "Rocky and Bullwinkle." A number wrote adult sitcoms such as The Donna Reed Show , and M*A*S*H while some of them ultimately returned to Hollywood and made great films such as Norma Rae , and Midnight Cowboy . This is a thoughtful look at the aftermath of the horror that was the McCarthy period from two expert historians of the blacklist period.

Who knew? Wisconsin comic artists, editors, and publishers have made both central and fringe contributions to the language, form, and content of comic strips, comic books, and other forms of this popular art. Paul Buhle traces this history, illustrated by more than two hundred reproductions, from “The Gumps” and “Gasoline Alley”—which introduced the continuity of daily life into newspaper “funnies”—to comic book histories of Students for a Democratic Society and the Industrial Workers of the World, alternative press comics that fostered talents like Lynda Barry and James Sturm, and comic adaptations of totemic figures like Howard Zinn and Studs Terkel. Specialists and collectors will treasure this volume, and readers will find themselves educated and vastly entertained.

Book by Buhle, Paul, Sullivan, Edmund B.

The contribution by Jews to American popular culture is widely acknowledged yet scarcely documented. This is the first comprehensive investigation of the formative Jewish influence upon the rise and development of American popular culture, drawing upon extensive oral histories with several generations of Jewish artists, little-utilized Yiddish scholarship, and the author’s own connections with today’s comic-strip artists. Buhle shows how the rich legacy of Yiddish prepared would-be artists to absorb the cultures of their surrounding environments, seeing the world through the eyes of others, and producing the talent required for theater, films, television, popular music and comics.Buhle suggests that “premodern” and “postmodern” are arbitrary designations here, because the self-reflective content has always radiated an inner Jewishness. From Sholem Aleichem (who died in the Bronx) to Gertrude Berg, Woody Allen and Tony Kushner, from John Garfield to Roseanne Barr and Rube Goldberg to Cyndi Lauper, the cutting edge is never too far from home and humane antidotes to the pains of a troubled world. Contradictions between Jewish avant-garde and kitsch, mogul and artist, orthodoxy and heresy are given new sense here in the scope of cultural output adopted by ordinary Americans as their own. Illustrated with the work of Harvey Pekar and R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Ben Katchor, Trina Robbins and others, From the Lower East Side to Hollywood is full of humor and insight into the power of popular art to spark insight and encourage the endless quest for freedom.

There is no greater symbol of the American presidency than Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln himself, his personality, the sources of his dedication and his idealism, remain very much a mystery. The sudden rise to world stature of a hard-traveling lawyer from the frontier, with no prominent family or social connections to back him, was a wonder of the age.Well over a thousand books about Lincoln have been written and still the enigma remains, perhaps because it is the enigma of a young country finding its footing and its destiny. Yet, no part is deeper, more perplexing, than Lincoln's own beliefs about God and destiny.Featuring a foreword by Pulitzer prize-winning author Eric Foner, Lincoln For Beginners sets to demystify the man behind the legend.

Williams' controversial volumes, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, Contours of American History, and other works have established him as the foremost interpreter of US foreign policy. Both Williams and others deeply influenced by him have recast not only diplomatic history but also the story of pioneer America's westward movement, and studies in the culture of imperialism.At the end of the Cold War, when the US no longer faces any great enemy, the lessons of William Appleman Williams' life and scholarship have become more urgent than ever before. This study of his life and major works offers readers an opportunity to introduce, or re-introduce, themselves to a major figure of the last half-century.

La izquierda de Hollywood es el primer libro exhaustivo sobre la historia de los progresistas de Hollywood. Paul Buhle y Dave Wagner siguen las trayectorias personales y políticas de los guionistas, actores, directores y productores de izquierdas desde los albores del cine sonoro hasta principios de la década de 1950 y el decisivo impacto que tuvo su trabajo en la época dorada de la industria cinematográfica en EEUU. Llena de detalles biográficos y anécdotas sabrosas, indaga en los pormenores sobre películas muy conocidas, injustamente olvidadas o deliciosamente estrafalarias; el libro es, según ?Publishers Weekly?, ?un análisis inteligente, bien expuesto y apasionante de cómo el arte y la política pueden hacer inesperados y a veces extraños compañeros de cama?. La izquierda de Hollywood también cuenta el mensaje oculto que hay detrás de películas en géneros como el policíaco, el cine familiar, el bélico, de animación y en particular del cine negro y que muchas veces ha pasado desapercibido.

Tim Hector (1942–2002) played many roles―political philosopher, educator, literary and music critic, cricket administrator, political leader, and newspaper editor. Best known for his editorship of the newspaper Outlet and his cofounding of the Afro-Caribbean Liberation Movement, Hector struggled for the independence of his native island Antigua. As a disciple of C. L. R. James, he was one of the Pan-African movement's most vital figures, and his regular column “Fan the Flame” in Outlet was followed avidly throughout the Caribbean. His insights into regional history, politics, cricket, and literature were eagerly awaited.Biographer Paul Buhle traces Hector's intellectual development and explores how the editor-activist's political philosophy evolved from an early island nationalism and militant Marxism into an embrace of democratic self-determination and of political union in a future Caribbean nation. Hector's Afro-Caribbean Liberation Movement labored to make Black Nationalism into a generous vision of collective pride and historical destiny, with no one excluded. His trials and travails―loss of a teaching career, arrests, destruction of his printing press, the murder of his wife, betrayal by the political leaders he supported―were frankly revealed in his columns.Hector's life and work offer a saga of Caribbean achievement and anxiety, at once racial, political, economic, and ecological. Through the lens of Hector, Buhle gives the reader insight into the radical movements in the British West Indies. Hector's story unfolds in a region full of turmoil but also full of promise.