The Controversialist: Arguments with Everyone, Left Right and Center

Martin Peretz

Sep 2023 · Highbridge Audio · Narrated by Adam Barr

About this audiobook

From 1974 to 2012, during his years as publisher and editor-in-chief of the New Republic, Martin Peretz was a familiar presence on the political scene. In its time under his leadership, the magazine was always fresh, erudite, contrarian, and brave. Anyone interested in finding out the most distinctive expert takes on the issues that mattered-whether they be domestic or international, cultural or political-knew that the New Republic was required reading. The Controversialist begins in a vibrant but tragedy-stricken community of Yiddish Jews in his native Bronx and takes Peretz, blessed with that rare trait of always being in the right place at the right time, into the same rooms as some of the most prominent writers, thinkers, businessmen, activists, and politicians of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Peretz's insights into his relationships with these men and women are both original and illuminating. Through his examination of the personalities, not least his own, at the center of the events that have defined the postwar and neoliberal decades, Peretz makes a rich and compelling argument for the ideals that have been the focus of his life: liberalism, democracy, and Zionism. In revisiting this rich life, he considers, too, what will come next now that those ideals are no longer assured.

About the author

Martin Peretz was publisher and editor-in-chief of the New Republic for over thirty-five years. He is the recipient of the W. E. B Du Bois Medal, awarded by the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, and the Hubert H. Humphrey First Amendment Freedoms Prize.

Adam Barr, a recovering lawyer, former golf industry executive, former singing telegram messenger, and former print and television reporter, now bends the energy of all those "formers" toward his passion for acting and singing. He lives near New York City with his family.