To: willyboyishere
Genovese is an ex-Marxist; he's now a Roman catholic. And one of the best historians living.
52 posted on
02/17/2003 6:50:14 PM PST by
docmcb
To: docmcb
Indeed, Genovese is one of the best living historians,and I used to correspond with him in the late 60's. Genovese got lots of attention in the mid-60s by making some very intractably radical comments at some of the first University teach-ins against the War in Vietnam...."as a Marxist, not only do I not fear a Vietcong victory, I welcome one". The scholary/scientific tools he's always used (at least as far as "analysis" goes in his first several books) have alway been from the Marxist toolkit.
He was always at the same time one of the most trenchant critics of the New Left and called for them to be "put down and put down hard" at a American Historical Association conference. I suspect he's always been a Roman Catholic (which is not incompatible with being a Marxist), and I doubt he's completely given up his Marxist perspective. I haven't read much of him lately, but his writing was always lively and never burdened too much by doctrinaire Marxist rhetoric. He was always way too smart for that.
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