This is the story of Michael Harrington's struggle for relevance. He left the Catholic Worker in search of power to effect social change. A democratic socialist committed to improving the lot of the poor, he had to walk a tightrope between pragmatism and principle. Without selling out his socialist principles, he had to make forays into the Democratic Party, with mixed results. Democratic socialism, he said, was "the left wing of the possible." It was humanist, anti-Stalinist, anti-war, and in the tradition of Eugene Victor Debs.

He never held a position of real power, so his books and articles are his chief legacies. They were influential in nudging Democrats to the left, thus effecting social programs like the War on Poverty that made a difference in the lives of some people. TIME Magazine described his book "The Other America" as one of the ten most influential nonfiction books of the twentieth century.

This book is a thorough and well documented portrayal of his many ideological and personal changes--at one time he called himself a Republican!--and his faction fighting within the Left. It is occasionally critical of him, but fair and objective. There is a lot of history here, and a lot of politics. Some philosophy. Plus interesting insights into other prominent people, such as Tom Hayden, Norman Thomas, Dorothy Day, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Bayard Rustin, Max Shachtman, Irving Howe, William F. Buckley, and George Meany. ( )

Minireview: Despite its size, this thick biography of "Mr. Socialism USA" of the '70s and '80s somehow feels incomplete and unfulfilled. Perhaps that's because Harrington's mission, program, and promise were never fulfilled themselves. It was sometimes said that Harrington would have been Prime Minister had he been born in Europe; in the United States he was a not-widely-known and now-almost-forgotten author and intellectual. Less poetically, by focusing both on Harrington's life and the movements to which he dedicated the bulk of his time and energy, Isserman must gloss over many aspects of both. Nevertheless, the book itself doesn't disappoint at all; the incompleteness I felt was a sense of larger stories to be told, coupled with some melancholy over the repeatedly dashed hopes and aspirations of Harrington's life and work. ( )