'The Other American'

We Americans keep saying we're looking for courage, authenticity and principle in politics. Yet we're tough on public figures who display such traits... Few public figures were more alive to this problem than the late Michael Harrington, whose life is done justice in a just-released biography, The Other American... The new book by historian Maurice Isserman can be ranked as a serious political event because Harrington, who died in 1989, was the most important and creative figure on the American left in the last half-century.