SOURCE: Edman, Irwin. “Thoughts in the Dark.” New Republic 122 (3 April 1950): 19-20.

In the following review, Edman offers a negative assessment of Of Fear and Freedom.

The author of Christ Stopped at Eboli commands the interested attention of anyone who read that wise and touching picture of a remote, oppressed peasant community in the hills of southern Italy. One felt in Levi's admirable vignette of eternal humanity the sensibilities of a poet and something of a seer. Now comes a book, written five years earlier, when the author was living in France. It was at the beginning of World War II; Levi was depressed about the future as well as the present and disenchanted with the past. He thought it at least a good moment to make his peace with himself and his estimate of the universe. This volume constitutes a philosophy, the author's philosophy, his confession of faith...