Radical Son
In a narrative that possess both remarkable political importance and extraordinary literary power, David Horowitz tells the story of his startling political odyssey from Sixties radical to Nineties conservative. A political document of our times, Radical Son traces three generations of one American family’s infatuation with the radical left from the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 to the collapse of the Marxist empire six decades later.
David Horowitz was one of the founders of the New Left and an editor of Ramparts, the magazine that set the intellectual and revolutionary tone for the movement. From his vantage point at the center of the action, he populates Radical Son with vivid portraits of people who made the radical decade, while unmaking America at the same time. We are introduced to an aged Bertrand Russell, the world-famous philosopher and godson of John Stuart Mill, who in his nineties became America’s scourge, organizing a War Crimes Tribunal over the war in Vietnam. There is Tom Hayden, the radical Everyman who promoted guerilla warfare in America’s cities in the Sixties, married film legend Jane Fonda, and became a Democratic state senator when his revolutions failed. We meet Huey Newton, a street hustler and murderer who founded a black militia that became the Sixties’ most resonant symbol of black power and black militance.
Horowitz’s encounter with Newton and his Black Panthers, the most celebrated radical group of the Sixties, becomes the focal point of the story when a brutal murder committed by the Panthers changes his life forever, prompting the profound “second thoughts” that eventually led him to become an intellectual leader of conservatism and its most prominent activist in Hollywood.
Horowitz’s memoir—often painful, occasionally maddening, always riveting—is a spiritual autobiography about the costs and consequences of bad commitments. The implications of his political choices haunt Horowitz on every page, from the breakup of his two marriages to his estrangement from his Communist father; from shattered friendships with former comrades to reconciliation with his grown children. This painful and difficult journey from Left to Right has made Horowitz the most hated ex-radical of his generation. In telling his story he provides not just an intimate personal account of his own transformation, but a scathing moral history of the American left, and a guide to the evolving political conscience of a whole generation of liberals.
“One of the best political memoirs I have ever read.”
-P.J. O’Rourke
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END OF TIME
Three days after terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, David Horowitz discovered that he had prostate cancer. As America was rebuilding, he emerged from months of treatment with a “reprieve” from his disease. He emerged as well with this remarkable book of hard won insights about how we get to our end and what we learn along the way. A stunning departure from the polemics and social criticism that have made Horowitz one of our most controversial public intellectuals, The End of Time is a wide ranging, unflinching and lyrical meditation on subjects ranging from what parents inadvertently teach us in their deaths, to the forbidding reality of the cancer ward and the way in which figures like Mohammed Atta use death to become gods of their own mad creation. Read More >
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A CRACKING OF THE HEART
After losing a loved one, “pay attention to the ways in which your relationship continues.” So advised Sarah Horowitz in an interview she gave the day before her unexpected death. In A Cracking of the Heart, David Horowitz explores the legacy of his extraordinary daughter’s short life, and narrates his quest for a deeper understanding of the child he lost. A remarkable woman and gifted writer, Sarah was afflicted with a birth condition that, while complicating and ultimately shortening her life, never affected her dreams. From an early age, she displayed inspiring courage in facing her own difficulties and boundless compassion for the underserved and overlooked in many communities, from an autistic niece in her own family to uneducated children in Africa. Read More >
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A POINT IN TIME
New York Times bestselling author David Horowitz is famous for his conversion from 1960s radicalism. In A Point in Time, his lyrical yet startling new book, he offers meditations on an even deeper conversion, one which touches on the very essence of every human life. Part memoir and part philosophical reflection, A Point in Time focuses on man’s inevitable search for meaning—and how for those without religious belief, that search often leads to a faith in historical progress, one that is bound to disappoint. Horowitz agrees with Marcus Aurelius, whose stoic philosophy provides a focal point for the book, “He who has seen present things has seen all, both everything that has taken place from all eternity and everything that will be for time without end.…” Read More >
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YOU’RE GOING TO BE DEAD ONE DAY
Continuing his acclaimed series of meditations on life and death, David Horowitz turns to the consolation that his marriage and family have brought him amid the trials of age and illness. You’re Going to Be Dead One Day is a political warrior’s reflection on the mysterious rejuvenating power of love, the bittersweet way in which our children reward us while also leaving us behind, and how kindnesses to others bring blessings home.
As a young radical, Horowitz, like his father, gave his all to the cause of a global salvation. After bitter experience brought him back to earth, he discovered the grace that comes from more modest redemptions and a woman whose devotion to other lives gave a deeper meaning to his. The story he tells is a “romance of age” rather than youth, of achievement rather than promises. A reflective Horowitz writes, “Sometimes I grow misty in my walks when I think back over the years and remember the people I loved and the times I failed them. No regret is greater than these memories, salted by the wisdom of hindsight. I should have been a better husband and father and friend. I want to believe that the man I am now would have done better. But while my thoughts can travel back in time, I cannot. Consequently, there is little I can do with these regrets other than use them as an inspiration to be kinder and more understanding toward those I love in the days that remain.” Read More >