"Don’t be alarmed by the title! These are not the memoirs of a revolutionist. What surprised me most was to discover that the 'revolutionary' interlude in Mr. Macdonald’s life was so brief. He did not begin to study Marxist literature until the late 30’s; he was a member of the Trotskyist movement for only two years (1939-1941); and by 1944, when he founded his own magazine, Politics, he was no longer a revolutionist at all, but an angry individualist and a kindly moral pacifist. This record, it seems to me, shows again how some people tend to exaggerate the significance of the brief interlude during which American intellectuals were experimenting with radical ideas. Mr. Macdonald’s professional life is securely anchored elsewhere. For seven years he was a staff writer for Fortune, and since 1949 he has been a staff writer for the New Yorker: both solid, respectable pillars of bourgeois society." - Hans Meyerhoff, Commentary, 1957