Stone, I. F. The Best of I. F. Stone. Edited by Karl Weber. Introduction by Peter Osnos. Public Affairs, 2006.
The recent death of Pete Hamill got me to thinking about some of my other twentieth-century journalism heroes. Izzy Stone is high on the list. From Pearl Harbor to Vietnam, from McCarthy to Nixon, he did the kind of open-source investigative journalism that few reporters these days have the time or energy to pursue. His small-circulation weekly newspaper was read by everyone on Capitol Hill because he attended the dull committee meetings, read the reports, and delved into the seldom-read pages of the Congressional Record. He was a leftist at a time when leftists were called before Congress for public pillorying. He was a Zionist who defended the right of Nazis to speak. He was a friend of Robert Kennedy who was not afraid to charge him with equivocation on Vietnam. Finally, when he closed I. F. Stone’s Weekly, he spent his retirement getting a doctorate in classical literature and writing scholarly books on Socrates and Athenian Democracy. This well-edited and introduced anthology of his journalism will give you some idea of the clarity of his mind. Recommended. ( )

I.F. Stone (1907-1989) was a highly respected, independent American journalist of extraordinary skill, integrity and courage. For over 40 years, he analyzed and reported on national and international events; exposed corruption and deception; and offered iconoclastic analyses that countered the claims of governmental leaders and politicians. He frequently traveled to locations around the US and the world (as in his trip to the USSR in the mid- 1950s), to report in person on what he witnessed. Never one to cite “confidential sources”, he frequently relied on official documents and statistics to raise difficult questions overlooked or ignored by other journalists. As journalist Bill Moyers put it, “For years he was America’s premier independent journalist, bringing down on his head the sustained wrath of the high and mighty for publishing… the government’s lies and contradictions culled from the government’s own official documents.”

Stone’s independent and idealistic stance put him at odds with the political establishment, particularly the right wing. Nevertheless, he was uncompromising in his commitment to principle; his patriotism; his defense of freedom of thought, speech, and press; and his dream of a free socialistic democracy. With hindsight, it is clear that IF Stone was right on many significant issues, including racial integration and civil rights, the dangers of McCarthyism, and US involvement in the disastrous war Southeast Asia.

This collection brings together essays written by IF Stone from the 1930s through the 1970s. Most were printed in his small independent publication IF Stone’s Weekly; others first appeared in New York Post, Nation, and New York Review of Books. The essays are grouped by category, and roughly chronologically, under the following headings:

1. Worth the Risk presents essays on political repression and freedom of speech in both the 1950s and 1960s. Among the essays are the ones dealing with the demagogue Joseph McCarthy, the Pentagon Papers, and campus rebellions during the Vietnam War.

2. A Good War – But for What? contains essays written during World War II, raising questions about military tactics, the goals of the war, weak leadership by Truman, a “flawed’ investigation of the Pearl Harbor attack, and formation of the United Nations.

3. Twilight Struggles considers conflict between the US and the USSR, the post war rearming of Germany, Stalinist Russia (which Stone characterized as repressive and dishonest, before the evils of Stalinism became entirely apparent to the world), the Cuban missile crisis, and weak leadership of JF Kennedy.

4. The Wall between Black and White focuses on race relations, and the historic struggle for integration and civil rights, as well as the “black- Jewish” conflict in New York City, and implications of the ML King assassination.

5. A Promised Land presents essays on Jewish refugees during WW2, establishment of the new Jewish state (in which Stone argues for a divided Palestine for both Arabs and Jews), and the Israeli Wars.

6. A War made of Lies analyses US involvement in Vietnam, including the Gulf of Tonkin incident (deceptively used by LB Johnson to gain Congressional approval for military action), Robert Kennedy’s “tepid” stance on the war, and on why the military action was bound to fail.

7. Heroes and Others, offers essays on Franklin Roosevelt (“Farewell to F.D.R”), Albert Einstein, Thomas Dewey, Barry Goldwater (“Goldwater and his Tribe”) and General Curtis LeMay (“Caveman in a Jet Bomber.”)

The Best of IF Stone is an excellent collection, a walk through four decades of history and politics, as seen through the eyes of an uncompromising liberal idealist. In reading the book, I earmarked passages for quotation here, but find them too numerous to present. I recommend this work highly for anyone interested in US history and political journalism. ( )