Nat Hentoff Summary

Asked once to cite the key influences in his life, journalist, essayist, author, and novelist Nat Hentoff replied in Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series (CAAS), "Being Jewish. Jazz. The First Am... Read more

Critical Essay by Martin B. Duberman In the current deluge of "civil rights" literature, this excellent book [The New Equality] is unlikely to get the wide reading it deserves. Which is ... Read more

Critical Essay by Eleanor Cameron Nat Hentoff has written two novels for teenagers: one good, Jazz Country …; and one, to my mind, a failure, I'm really dragged but nothing gets me down&... Read more

Critical Essay by Roderick Nordell Two centuries after Shakespeare, not to mention ten times as many after Homer, people still did not know what "poetry is."… So it is hardly surp... Read more

Critical Essay by Dorothy M. Broderick [Nat Hentoff's The First Freedom: The Tumultuous History of Free Speech in America] is the first truly popular history of the First Amendment, making it a... Read more

Critical Essay by Annie Gottlieb ["Does This School Have Capital Punishment?" is] a sentimental fantasy, complete with good guys who need to learn compassion, bad guys who turn out to ha... Read more

Critical Essay by John A. Nelson Hentoff's ability to speak both passionately and objectively makes The First Freedom a success. Readers are left with two valuable insights, each essential to a... Read more

Critical Essay by Geoff Fox The American boys' private school has had a bad press in recent times. John Knowles's A Separate Peace and Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War uncovered... Read more

Critical Essay by Stephanie Zvirin [The Day They Came to Arrest the Book is an] undisguised but timely and articulate issue book with a number of artfully developed stereotypes…. New librarian ... Read more

Critical Essay by Saul Maloff [At the end of "The Day They Came to Arrest the Book"], George Mason High School and the community have just emerged from bloody struggle between the forces... Read more

Critical Essay by Carolyn Heilbrun ["Jazz Country"] is the best of the teen-age books I have read. Not only does it render the experience of jazz with passion, with what strikes an uninf... Read more

Critical Essay by Time Horatio Alger's Ragged Dick, Tattered Tom and Ben the Luggage Boy—those brave little ragamuffins of a century ago—have long since petrified into pillars of ... Read more

Critical Essay by John Weston Nat Hentoff's "I'm Really Dragged But Nothing Gets Me Down" treats an important dilemma: how best can a young man serve his country and himsel... Read more