Murray Kempton

A definitive collection of writings by the legendary Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Murray Kempton (1917-1997) with a foreword by Darryl Pinckney, gathering dozens of columns, essays, and critiques from publications including The New York Post, The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, and Newsday. With many uncollected and long out-of-print writings, this is the first volume of Kempton's work to appear in 30 years, a book that resdiscovers the legendary figure of journalism that David Remnick calls "the greatest newspaperman in town." "The man is a marvel. It's like listening to Louis Armstrong, or Roy Eldridge: you don't know where the hell he is going, but somehow he gets there and it knocks your socks off." --Frank Sinatra A courtly man of Southern roots, Murray Kempton worked as a labor reporter for the New York Post, won a Pulitzer Prize while at Newsday, and was arrested at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago along the way. He wore three piece suits and polished oxfords and was known for riding his bicycle around New York City while listening to his CD Walkman and smoking a pipe with wild red hair that later turned white. He developed a taste for baroque prose and became, in the words of Robert Silvers, his editor at The New York Review of Books, ''unmatched in his moral insight into the hypocrisies of politics and their consequences for the poor and powerless.'' He went to court proceedings and traffic accidents and funerals and to speeches by people who either were or wanted to be rich and famous. He wrote about everything and anybody--Tonya Harding and Warren Harding, Fidel Castro and Mussolini, Harry Truman and Sal Maglie, St. Francis of Assisi and James Joyce and J. Edgar Hoover. From dispatches from a hardscrabble coal town in Western Maryland, a bus carrying Freedom Riders through Mississippi, an Iowa cornfield with Nikita Krushchev, an encampment of guerrillas in El Salvador, and Moscow at the end of the Soviet Union (these last two assignments filed by a reporter in his 70s), Kempton's concerns and interests were extraordinarily broad. He wrote about subjects from H. L. Mencken to Tupac Shakur; organized labor and McCarthyism; the Civil Rights and Black Power movements; presidential hopefuls and Mafiosi; frauds and failures of all stripes; the "splendors and miseries" of life in New York City.

Through brilliant portraits of real persons who created the myths and realities of the 1930s, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Murray Kempton brings that turbulent decade to life. Himself a child of the time, Kempton examines with the insight and imagination of a novelist the men and women who embraced, grappled with, and in many cases were destroyed by the myth of revolution. What he calls the "ruins and monuments of the Thirties" include Paul Robeson, Alger Hiss, and Whittaker Chambers, the Hollywood Ten, the rebel women Elizabeth Bentley and Mary Heaton Vorse, and the labor leaders Walter Reuther and Joe Curran.

""Part of Our Time: Some Ruins and Monuments of the Thirties"" is a non-fiction book by Murray Kempton, published in 1955. The book is a collection of essays that explore the cultural, political, and social landscape of the 1930s in America. Kempton examines the events, personalities, and ideas that defined the decade, including the Great Depression, the rise of fascism, the New Deal, and the labor movement. He also delves into the lives of individuals who were influential during this time, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, John Steinbeck, and Huey Long. The book is a reflection on the impact of the 1930s on American society and the lasting legacy of this era. With its insightful analysis and engaging prose, ""Part of Our Time"" is a valuable resource for anyone interested in American history and culture. This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.