Irving Howe

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Irving Howe (1920 – 1993), was born Irving Horenstein in New York, the son of immigrants who ran a small grocery store that went out of business during the Great Depression.

Howe graduated from City College in 1940. He entered radical politics as a member of the Young People's Socialist League and through it graduated to Max Shachtman's Workers Party and after 1948 the Independent Socialist League of which he was a central leader. He then left the ISL to become the founding editor of Dissent magazine. He also co-founded the Democratic Socialists of America. He was the Distinguished Professor of Literature, City University of New York (CUNY) and a noted editor of Yiddish literature who discovered the author Isaac Bashevis Singer for an English-speaking audience. Howe is regarded as one of the "New York Intellectuals". He wrote an autobiography A Margin of Hope (1982 ISBN 0151571384) as well as many other works, such as World of Our Fathers ISBN 0-8052-0928-X and Socialism and America.