Irving Howe

Irving Howe
Howe during his year as writer in residence at University of Michigan, 1967-1968
Born	Irving Horenstein (1920-06-11)June 11, 1920 The Bronx, New York, U.S.
Died	May 5, 1993(1993-05-05) (aged 72) Manhattan, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Writer, public intellectual
Nationality	American

Irving Howe (/haʊ/; June 11, 1920 – May 5, 1993) was a Jewish American literary and social critic and a prominent figure of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Howe was born as Irving Horenstein in The Bronx, New York. He was the son of Jewish immigrants from Bessarabia, Nettie (née Goldman) and David Horenstein, who ran a small grocery store that went out of business during the Great Depression. His father became a peddler and eventually a presser in a dress factory. His mother was an operator in the dress trade.

Howe attended City College of New York and graduated in 1940, alongside Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol; by the summer of 1940, he had changed his name to Howe for political (as distinct from official) purposes. While at school, he was constantly debating socialism, Stalinism, fascism, and the meaning of Judaism. He served in the US Army during World War II. Upon his return, he began writing literary and cultural criticism for the influential Partisan Review and became a frequent essayist for Commentary, politics, The Nation, The New Republic, and The New York Review of Books. In 1954, Howe helped found the intellectual quarterly Dissent, which he edited until his death in 1993. In the 1950s Howe taught English and Yiddish literature at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. He used the Howe and Greenberg Treasury of Yiddish Stories as the text for a course on the Yiddish story, when few were spreading knowledge or appreciation of the works in American colleges and universities.