ABSTRACT
Running Commentary is the story of a magazine and also of the people, who created it, nurtured it, quarrelled about it, shaped or misshaped it, sometimes abandoned and attacked it, during its long history. The title of Benjamin Balint's critical history derives from Elliot Cohen's "Act of Affirmation" in the inaugural issue of November 1945. The year 1945 marked "an epoch in world history" because World War II had just ended, the age of nuclear destruction had just begun, and the destruction of European Jewry was now common knowledge. As managing editor of the Menorah Journal, a forerunner of Commentary, Cohen expressed the view that the intellect of American Jews had failed to keep pace with their economic and political progress. Balint, who was an assistant editor of Commentary from 2001 to 2004, is a prodigiously talented, learned, and articulate young man, with a marvelous flair.
