SOURCE: Bowman, James. “Patriotism of the Heart.” New Criterion 19, no. 1 (September 2000): 72-4.

In the following review, Bowman applauds My Love Affair with America as an “impressive emotional and intellectual autobiography,” particularly commending Podhoretz's ideas regarding American patriotism.

Why, I wonder, does Norman Podhoretz subtitle the latest installment of his impressive emotional and intellectual autobiography [My Love Affair with America] a “cautionary tale”? Against what are we cautioned? Why should we be warned, like Belloe's naughty children, by a touching account of the education in “Americanism” of a son of Jewish-Galician immigrants, or by the unabashed celebration of American patriotism it gave rise to? Is there a slight ironic joke here? Be careful, or you might find yourself becoming a patriot?

The real story of the book is not so much that of how patriotism was produced by Mr. Podhoretz's experience of this country but of how that experience...