I've got a question for the list. Can anybody suggest a detailed and pretty comprehensive book on New York literary, political, cultural scene, 1930s-1950s. I've been through a few things on the web, following The New York Intellectuals, as the subject. I've also read Norman Podhoretz, Ex-Friends.
This was the intellectual climate that Leo Strauss came to in the US from Weimar. Most of his publishing record between 1938-48 (New York years) was done in a journal called Social Research. I am a little unclear if this is the same journal as the one attached to The New School, The Journal of Social Research.
Strauss in Weimar did a lot of writing for political journals like Der Jude, but once he got here, he switched to almost exclusively academic based journals. This was a little strange. I need to understand what was going on.
I think two things. First magazines like The Nation, New Republic, Commentary, and Partian Review were all running leftie writers. Second, Strauss was one elitist snob, and would have looked at those magazines as the chattering herd. I imagine Strauss skulking about The New School dodging Arendt and her friends...
Anyway, I want to build up and image of what that intellectual climate was like and how Strauss would and wouldn't fit. He got to NYC through Harold Laski (leftie, Labor party) who was friends with Michael Oakeshott. Oakeshott wrote a long and highly favorable review on Strauss's book on Hobbes.
CG