Acknowledgments

It is with pleasure and gratitude that I dedicate The Long March to my friend and colleague Hilton Kramer. It was he who, several years ago, first suggested that I write a book about America’s cultural revolution. When a decent interval elapsed and nothing happened, he then suggested that I write a series on the subject for The New Criterion, thus inducing me to produce the basis for the present book. I have benefited greatly from his astute criticism.

I am also most grateful to Peter Collier, my editor at Encounter Books. Peter knows as much about the subject of this book as anyone, and he did for my manuscript what editors of old are reported to have done: he read through it carefully and made dozens of substantive suggestions for improvement.

I am extremely grateful as well to Erich Eichman, who snatched time from his own labors to read and comment with his usual insight on the entire manuscript. I would also like to thank Jonathan Cohen, Donald Kagan, and Carl Rollyson for their help and expertise in commenting on various parts of the book. I am particularly in debt to Alexandra Kimball, who, among other things, cheerfully read and re-read this book as it evolved and who nevertheless consented to read through it once more to compile the index. I am also grateful to my colleagues, past and present, at The New Criterion—Sara E. Lussier, Robert Messenger, Robert Richman, Maxwell Watman, and David Yezzi—fbr their help and encouragement along the way.

Finally, I would like to express my special thanks to the John M. Olin Foundation and the W H. Brady Foundation, both of which helped make it possible for me to write this book. I am profoundly grateful to them.

With so much help, one might reasonably expect perfection ; alas, I am only too aware of the many imperfections that remain: they are poor things, but my own.

A word about references: In order not to interrupt the flow of the argument, I decided against including superscripts for routine citations. There are a few substantive footnotes in the text, but references, identified by a brief quotation and the page to which they refer, are gathered at the end of the book.

 

RK

January 2000