Reviews for World Of Faces

The average rating for World Of Faces based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-11-23 00:00:00 Jared Guss I bought this book at a neighborhood yard sale a few weeks ago, thinking to pass it on as a gift to my stepbrother whose fortieth birthday was nigh. Glancing at it, however, intrigued me enough to give it a try. I don't usually read much cultural criticism, but this treatment of the cultural aspects of the Popular Front, combining as it does the arts with progressive politics, wasn't disappointing. Author Denning circumscribes that generational wave of radical populism in the United States associated with the Popular Front to the period from the beginning of the Depression in 1929 through to the beginnings of the Cold War in 1948. While he amply acknowledges the influence of the Communist Party and its front organizations on progressive politics during those two decades, he rejects the notions that the CP was responsible for the movement or exercised much control over its many manifestations. If there is an organization he does lay emphasis on it is the C.I.O., Congress of Industrial Organizations, but even here he sees it primarily as a manifestation, not as a cause. This book is not for everyone. Anyone who lived during the times covered could handle it, but younger people might find some of the references obscure since it's assumed that the general political history of the period is known to the reader. I, informed by older relatives, long-standing relations with the "old left" of the I.W.W. and Socialist Party and some considerable study of the period, had no trouble with the political background, but I still was somewhat intimidated by the hundreds of cultural figures mentioned, many of whom were just names to me. This humbling experience has, however, made me want to pay more attention to hitherto little-known artists and authors. My greatest disappointment with this otherwise quite impressive work was with how little attention was paid to the "old left", its figures and organizations. I suppose it is justified in that they antedated in their origins the thirties, but the influence of the pre-Communist socialists and of such figures as Norman Thomas was considerable during this period and on the "new left" that followed. This book gives little sense of that.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-09-07 00:00:00 Lorne Tippit Denning argues that the popular front (the broad radical, social-democratic movement forged around anti-fascism, anti-lynching/racism, and the industrial unionism of the CIO)'s "cultural front" movement reshaped ("labored") American culture regarding: - use of "labor" or synonyms thereof in rhetoric - increased influence on and participation of working-class Americans in culture and arts (result of expansion of mass culture/higher education/entertainment industries) - labor of cultural production (the most convincing part of the book) - social-democratic influence on the left of the new deal - all producing a "second American Renaissance" the first time, in other words, that the Left had a central impact on American culture.