Dorothy Healey remembers : a life in the American communist party /

Scholars are beginning to examine more objectively the inner workings of the Communist Party USA. Without denying its subservience to Soviet control, Isserman is interested in examining generational conflict and change, specifically, how the party was shaped by events within the US. Although oral history purists might fault his rewrite methods, Isserman's research is solid, his style felicitous, and his subject's story worth telling. Since joining the Young Communist League at age 14 (her mother was a Communist party charter member who weaned her children on Upton Sinclair's novels), Healy was in the forefront of organizational drives, labor struggles, civil rights crusades, and intraparty warfare. She was the object of red-baiting witch hunts and spent time underground and in jail for her political beliefs. Coming of age during the "Popular Front" years, Healey, California's most prominent Communist, rejected the party doctrine of "democratic centralism," which forbade questioning of existing policies. She defended the 1939 Stalin-Hitler Pact and the 1956 Hungarian invasion, but she spoke out against the 1968 Czechoslovakian invasion. Barely tolerated by Gus Hall and the New York party hierarchy, Healey resigned from the party in 1973 (her last service to the party was the Angela Davis defense campaign) but remained active in other radical movements. Harboring little bitterness toward her estranged colleagues, Healey retained a vision of socialism with freedom and a hatred of capitalism. Recommended for general and academic readers, upper-division undergraduate level and above. -J. B. Lane, Indiana University Northwest

Drawing from personal letters, interviews, newspaper articles, self-reflections, government reports, campaign pamphlets, and FBI memos, among other sources, noted historian Isserman, in conjunction with the subject herself, brilliantly weaves together a multitextured chronicle of the life and times of America's most controversial and unusual Communist party leader, Dorothy Ray Healey. It's an utterly fascinating, richly detailed account, spanning 45 years, of how this remarkable woman--wife, mother, and political activist--broke with tradition and defied even the conventions of her gender to rise from union organizer to leader of the Los Angeles district Communist organization, the second most influential branch of the American Communist party. But foremost, Isserman seeks to answer the question of why Healey remained loyal to the party for so long after her contemporaries had left it and despite her deepening criticisms of its dogma and activities, a goal he laudably achieves here. An eye-opening biography and a highly readable history of a crucial era in American communism (1928-73), intended for scholars and general readers alike. To be indexed. --Mary Banas