Isserman, Maurice

Maurice Isserman is an historian and author of The Other American: The Life of Michael Harrington (2000), and of Which Side Are You On?: The American Communist Party during the Second World War, and If I Had a Hammer: The Death of the Old Left and the Birth of the New Left (1993). Isserman is also a professor of history at Hamilton College (New York).

Michael Harrington (1928-1989), is best known as the author of The Other America: Poverty in the United States (1962), and as the founder and leader of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, which later became the Democratic Socialists of America (U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International). He also taught political science at Queens College, part of the City University of New York, and continued to write, lecture and travel widely until his death from cancer in 1989. Among his many books were two autobiographical works, Taking Sides: The Education of a Militant Mind (1985) and The Long-Distance Runner : An Autobiography (1987), The New American Poverty (1984), The Politics at God's Funeral: The Spiritual Crisis of Western Civilization (1985), and Socialism : Past and Future (1989).

From the guide to the Maurice Isserman Research Files for, The Other American: The Life of Michael Harrington, ., Bulk, 1970-1995, 1940-1995, (Tamiment Library / Wagner Archives)