Out of Step: An Unquiet Life in the 20th Century

There is a reward for anyone who makes the effort to find and read this thick, out-of-print memoir by one of the leading leftist thinkers of the 20th Century. Sidney Hook was a sui generis, an entity of its own kind, "out of step" with the rest of his peers of socialists, Marxists, Trotskites, communists and assorted "pinkos". His fascinating and well-told political odyssey began early in the 20th century as a rabid supporter of the Leninist Revolution, then he matured in stages as he was repelled by the terror of Stalin's death purges and the phony Moscow Show Trials of the 1930's. Though he favored Trotsky over Stalin, Hook was not blind to Trotsky's own streak of brutality and bent toward violence. As Hook aged, he grew weary of knee-jerk liberalism and became a rabid anti-communist. The intellectuals of his time came into and out of Sidney Hook's life and they get mentioned in the pages of his recollections: Lionel and Diana Trilling, John Dewey, Albert Einstein, Bertold Brecht, Bertrand Russell and various prominent personalities from the so-called "New York Intellectuals."While a professor of philosophy at New York University during those dark days in the late 1960's, Hook was an eye-witness to the disgraceful phenomenon that crippled several American college campuses of that era as frenzied mobs upended the campuses and brought higher education to a halt. Hook was totally "out of step" with his colleagues who, he charged, were ruled by fear and lacked the moral courage to put a stop to the outrages of the mob. Though he never lost his socialist fervor, Hook's personal war against communism and his firm adherence to intellectual integrity were ultimately acknowledged and honored at a ceremony at the White House when he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Ronald Reagan, Commander in Chief in the battle against the "Evil Empire" of communism. It was the supreme reward for being "out of step."